*Niall McMahon fends off the challenge of Diarmuid Stritch. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
ÉIRE Óg’s hurlers targeted building a panel at the beginning of the year, the foundations are solid with two wins from two championship outings.
A three point win on Sunday in a cracking contest saw Éire Óg overcome county champions Clonlara to leave them as the only team with an unbeaten run in the very competitive Group 1 of the TUS Clare SHC.
Their win was made all the more impressive given that their star man Shane O’Donnell was forced off with a hamstring injury on forty minutes.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Éire Óg manager Gerry O’Connor admitted, “It’s hard to judge what sort of a game it is when you are on the sideline. We felt that our concession of frees was keeping them in the game at vital times and Tots (Cathal O’Connell) had a big influence in the last fifteen minutes but Danny Russell gave a performance which I thought was incredible especially when SODs (Shane O’Donnell) went off”.
He explained, “It’s very important for us to understand that we started out at the beginning of the year wanting to build a panel and bring on subs and we have had six debutants over the past two matches and a lot of those young fellas just did their Leaving Cert. James O’Dwyer was one of those and he had two brilliant points today. At the end of the day it’s a savage challenging group and we knew that. Look, every day we go out we want to improve.
Former Clare joint manager O’Connor believed their move of David McNamara to centre back on John Conlon had a big bearing on the outcome plus the impact of Oran Cahill going to midfield. “The first couple of scores were huge and SODs and Danny were huge. We switched Davy Mac onto John Conlon and brought Oran Cahill into the middle of the field. The stats were telling us that John was having a huge influence before half time. Clonlara are a savage team and we might meet them again later on in the year. It looked a very intense physical game and some great scores were taken by both sides”.
Focus for the Ennis club now switches to the Clare SFC where they are also unbeaten in two games and face Lissycasey where a win will see them top Group 1 and advance directly to the quarter-finals. “Look SODs has a hamstring injury and we have a football game against Lissycasey at the weekend. We hope and pray that we will get through that injury free. We would love to think that we can get out of the group and progress to the play offs,” O’Connor concluded.
