*Tulla Utd celebrate at the final whistle. Photograph: Joe Buckley
TULLA UTD are thrilled to have qualified for a first-ever Clare Cup final with manager Mike Moloney describing the feat as “a real landmark” in their progression.
A 4-3 win on Saturday saw the East Clare side overcome Bridge Utd to book their spot in the decider against Newmarket Celtic on May 24th in Frank Healy Park.
Creating history was on the mind of the Tulla troops in advance of the semi-final, manager Mike Moloney admitted. “It’s brilliant to get over the line. It’s the first time in the 55 year history of the club to qualify for a Clare Cup Final and we had been focusing on that leading up to the game that this is a chance for the lads to make history and there wouldn’t be another team that were going to get there first if we could do it.
“Another thing that we put to the lads was that there’s really strong talent coming behind them and there’s no reason to believe that this group would get this opportunity again. We’d love to think that we would and we feel that the club will be there again but this was their unique chance so we needed to grab it and therefore we’re delighted that they did do that,” he said.
With fifteen minutes played, they fell behind when Jack O’Halloran converted a penalty with Bridge coming close with a blitz of chances. “We started poorly enough and the Bridge put us under real pressure which wasn’t particularly a surprise. We had the experience of being in a semi-final two years ago but by the same token, the Bridge were coming off a really good test against Avenue while we were coming off maybe games that weren’t quite so competitive so we had to get up to that level.
“The Bridge penalty itself was marginal to say the least but the response of the lads to conceding was great and of course there was that slice of luck for the first goal as the ball came off Dan [Withycombe] and looped over John Mul. Sometimes you need a break like that, I mean I don’t know of any team that has ever won anything that hasn’t got a break somewhere along the line. However, from there the quality of the goals after that was superb. Eanna [Culloo}’s cross for Daragh Corry’s header was just a beautiful goal after a lovely ball from Seanie [Withycombe] out to him and then the quality of Dan’s two goals The set-ups from Ayoub [Aguerram], the strikes off right for the first one and left for the second one were must picture book goals. Those goals showed the quality first and foremost that the players had and the determination they demonstrated to shrug off the early set-back and just tear back into it,” he added.
Moloney admitted that they took a gamble by replacing some of their most established players. “One way or another I suppose we took a lot of leaders off. Daragh came off, Ayoub came off despite having a very good game but he was feeling a bit of a knock and then Dan and Sean who had played a Clare Cup game only two days previously were really beginning to feel it as well. Those players had to come off but in some way we also had an eye on the Avenue game in terms of wanting to keep lads a little fresher if we could. If that had backfired, I’d have got it in the neck but the lads did hold out as we didn’tt concede in that extended injury-time. Granted there was also a bit more luck involved as the Bridge were creating chances but I thought the lads showed great resilience and the lads that came on, a lot of them are young and they dug deep too to get the result”.
Reaching the Cup final is a sign of progress, he maintained. “You’re always looking for indications of progress and one way or another, you can talk about it in theory that we’ve a very young squad and we’re doing better than we were but when you get to a cup final, it’s a real landmark in terms of the progress that we are making. Young players need that, they need to see that the efforts that they’re putting in are worth it so it’s a big boost. It’s also a big boost for the club, the amount of work that has been done to develop the facilities over the past twenty years and getting them up to a particular standard, I suppose that sucked a lot of energy out of the club. But now that those fabulous facilities are there, we can concentrate on the playing and coaching side of things and bringing players through and I think anyone can see over the past couple of years that our underage now is so strong. I mean we’ve 24 teams in the CSSL, we’ve another six teams in the CSL including our women’s team; our youths are after winning the league and are also in the cup final; our Under 14 girls played in a national trophy semi-final on Friday, only losing on penalties; our Under 17 girls played in a quarter-final of Munster and won so these are great times for the club and for us to be in the middle of that is just brilliant.
“One way or another we are a flagship team for the club so there are loads of young lads coming through now and they can look up to other young lads that are only a few years older than them and say ‘well I want to be like him, I want to play soccer for Tulla and stay with Tulla’. The lads have been incredibly loyal to us. I mean you see lads moving from club A to B to C but all of our lads bar a couple have come up through our underage and that’s what we want. We want to be able to have an underage system that produces players for our A team and not me spending half the summer trying to bring in this lad or that lad. We have lads of our own, we just need to give them a chance,” Moloney told The Clare Echo.
