*Ikem Ugwueru. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
AN ELEVEN point loss to Kerry in the Munster final is “not the end of the road” for Clare’s senior footballers, Ikem Ugwueru has said.
Clare fell to a 4-20 0-21 defeat to Kerry who won the provincial crown for the eighty sixth time and the third in a row at Clare’s expense on Sunday.
Similar to the 2022 showing, Clare gifted Kerry an early advantage from which there would be no recovering, despite an improved second half display.
Ikem Ugwueru who started at wing back and moved to centre back at half time felt it was the opening quarter where the result was decided, by which juncture Kerry held a 2-5 0-3 lead. “You could almost say the first fifteen minutes let us down, we left too much space in front of David (Clifford) and Paul Geaney, they just killed us really, if you let Kerry get a two or three goal lead on you it’s very hard to come back, we stayed in it but at the end of the day those early goals killed us, it is disappointing because we were really up for it, we wanted to really give this a go and we thought we had a chance but the first fifteen minutes really let us down”.
Wearing the favourites tag, Jack O’Connor’s Kerry aimed to devour Clare early, David Clifford had two goals inside the first six minutes and once the green flags are raised by the Kingdom at this stage of the game few teams will be able to bounce back, Ikem maintained. “If it was any other team to get hit with goals like that they would struggle, we were down thirteen at half-time which was a bit of a mammoth journey to come back but at least the boys dug in and we kept fighting till the end so I can credit the boys one hundred percent, we never gave up, some other teams might die off but we said we’d keep tipping away and see how we go. It is not the end of the road here, we still have an All-Ireland series to work towards, we will look at what we did good and did bad here and we’ll work on them”.
For the Ennis man, it was his first appearance of the 2025 championship after injury ruled out him of the semi-final victory Tipperary. “It was a bit of a battle, I had a three or four week period to come back, I made it back this week, I’ll always put my heart and soul into playing for Clare, I enjoy playing for Clare so if an injury is touch and go I will always play. Thanks to the physios and all the S&C staff who helped me to come back, if it was not for them we would not be moving as well as we are. We will move on from here”.
Éire Óg’s Ikem stressed that it was key for Clare to start their All-Ireland SFC bid with a home victory over Down in two weeks time. “If we win the first game in the All-Ireland series we are basically in the running to get out of the group so we will put this behind us, get back to training and get to work for the first game in two weeks, we’ll move on from here”.
