Clare under 20 football manager, Michael Neylon, didn’t hide his disappointment when he spoke to members of the media after his charges were dumped out of the Munster championship at Fraher Field in Dungarvan on Thursday.
“We are very disappointed, no two ways about it. We had expectations that we were in a strong position coming into the game. We were also well aware of how well Waterford had prepared and we had mentioned that during the week, we had seen them,” the St Josephs Miltown clubman said.
“As I said to the Waterford players afterwards, we congratulate them, they were the better team on the night and when you are the better team on the night you deserve to go forward to the next round which is the Munster semi-final. We simply didn’t deserve to get through tonight, we weren’t ourselves”.
Continuing the highly respected coach said, “as we have said to the players, we have to move on from this, we have to be able to use it, we have to be able to put our finger on this. We had a lot right, we had a lot of good work done but there was something missing tonight that was essential for a team to make progress”.
The Clare boss felt Waterford showed the greater hunger in the final quarter of the game. “They made us look like we were maybe an inexperienced team and we are not. They certainly carried through their game plan far better than we did and particularly in the last quarter”.
“It’s never easy to come here and we have known that over the years. You are going to get an unbelievable game from good footballers and that was a good football side that beat us tonight. We consider ourselves to be a good football team and they simply were better than us tonight”.
Referring to the death of 20 year old St. Josephs Doora-Barefield club man Fionn O’Brien, “that tragic incident was on all of our minds coming into today and it was on all of our minds on Tuesday when we met at training. It puts things in perspective, the fact that we have lost a championship game, its a game of football, We are very mindful that these young lads are privileged to be able to play and represent their county”.
