*Newmarket Celtic striker Tadhg Noonan leaves Fair Green Celtic’s Shane Browne behind. Photograph: Joe Buckley
THERE’s no room for slip-ups in Clare junior soccer whether it is the beginning of the season or the crunch time of the year according to Newmarket Celtic manager, Eoin O’Brien.
O’Brien watched his Celtic charges qualify for the Ennis Carpets Clare Cup final with a comfortable 3-0 victory over First Division side Fair Green Celtic on Friday evening, winger Dean Hegarty delivering a man of the match display with two goals.
They’re ninety minutes away from claiming the Cup title while Newmarket are still in the shake-up for Premier Division honours alongside Avenue Utd, Bridge Utd and Tulla Utd who they will face in the Clare Cup final on May 24th.
Each game is of huge importance regardless of the time of year, O’Brien told The Clare Echo. “You can never afford a slip-up, in September and October you can’t afford a slip, that is the really interesting thing about the soccer, the three points we picked up the very first night against the Bridge in September is worth the same as the three points on offer against Inch on Tuesday, the game against Connolly in the first round of the Cup in the storm that was called off and refixed is equally as important as the Cup semi-final because if you lose then you are knocked out and nobody is talking about the Cup final”.
A holder of nine Clare Cup medals, Eoin was pleased with their showing in Friday’s semi-final win. “It was one of our better performances of the season, it was a tight game for half an hour, thirty five minutes but that bit of quality (made the difference). We were very pleased to go in 1-0 at half time, we came out, started quite well, we could have scored but once we got the second we looked comfortable and defended really well, I’m really pleased with the clean sheet”.
They put emphasis on producing a strong third quarter and struck for their second goal on fifty three minutes. “Our record against teams in lower league positions and in this case lower divisions has been quite poor in that third quarter, that was something in the analysis we focused in on and tried to concentrate on not letting teams back into it, in one way it is a good problem to have getting that first or second goal but if you want to be in finals and in the running for big titles you have to kill those games off, it looks easy in the end but it hasn’t always been the case for us”.
Hegarty produced another fine display for Celtic in a season where he has shone as one of their top players. “An outstanding player, quality through the roof, he was the difference in some of the tight games in the league against Kilrush and Avenue in the Cup, at this level that quality is the difference between the teams, if you can get players of different quality around him you always have a chance”.
As the season has progressed, Newmarket are building consistency with their starting team while they have been boosted by the return from injury of Irish junior international, Eoin Hayes. “We have a settled team but at the time it’s amateur football so there’s injuries, there’s things which come up all the time, we had three games in six days the week before last, we’ve a real maturity in terms of lads coming on and who are willing to say on the bench and say ‘look I’m not playing today but I understand the last half hour or twenty minutes is important for me because I’ll be playing Tuesday night’, it is virtually impossible at this level to play two games in three or four days, we’re very lucky with the characters we have in the squad”.
Although they have players such as Hayes, Shane Cusack, Harvey Cullinan and David McCarthy who have been leading lights with plenty of experience to rely on, O’Brien pointed out that this was more of an individual rather than collective benefit. “If you look through the team, it is half and half, there’s a lot of lads with FAI medals, Clare Cups and Clare leagues but you forget there’s a lot of guys in their first season of junior football. Cathal Cullinan is in his first season with us, he looks like he’s been playing for the last three or four years, so accomplished at left-back, Antony Dabrynets has come in and played centre-back making it look very easy, you’ve numerous other guys, you can say about the experience but it’s an individual thing really, if they haven’t played at this level before the experience of other lads doesn’t help, you have to go and do it yourself which is what they did here”.
