*Dermot Coughlan gathers possession for Kilmurry Ibrickane. Photograph: Burren Eye Photography
KILMURRY IBRICKANE are one of two teams already confirmed to have a place a place in the quarter-finals of the Clare SFC but they’ve “serious improvement to make” if they are to be in contention according to their manager.
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Successive wins over St Joseph’s Miltown and St Breckans see Kilmurry Ibrickane sit top of Group 3 ahead of the final round of games in the TUS Clare SFC.
They join Éire Óg as confirmed quarter-finalists, Cratloe have one foot in the knockout stages and only a scenario of losing to St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield and Kildysart beating Éire Óg would prevent them from advancing.
An 0-18 0-15 victory over St Breckans last Friday evening guaranteed Kilmurry Ibrickane’s passage to the last eight. “We were relatively happy we had a job to do and we did it, we were a little bit inconsistent with our performance, we had highs and lots of lows but fair play to St Breckans, they are a very good outfit, they are very pacy and they cut us open a few times, we are disappointed with how easy they cut us open at times, we felt we gave a lot of ball away and they got us on the break, we’ve loads to work on but we’ve our two points on the board which is great and we kicked 0-18 which is great kicking in championship football so we’re happy with that aspect to it,” manager David Egan outlined.
Back to back victories may have been recorded but Egan was adamant they must show considerable improvement. “That is my takeaway from tonight, we were good in patches but there’s patches that we’ve serious improvement to make and to be in a quarter-final playing like that is good, it’s plenty of food for our management and coaching team to be working on, that is what you want”.
Similar to their first round showing, the Bricks started very well, they carved out a 0-6 0-1 advantage by the end of the first quarter versus Breckans whereas it was 1-6 1-2 at this juncture versus St Josephs Miltown. However both games also saw Kilmurry Ibrickane produce a second quarter slump.
Egan advised by experienced members of the club attributed these to their more inexperienced line-up. “Chatting to some of the older statesmen in the club and they’d say that is what you get with the amount of young lads, that little bit of inconsistency where they’ve been very good and instead of levelling it out they go a total 360 flip and lose momentum in games but the new rules are bearing fruit to that and everyone is getting used to that. A six or seven point lead is not what it was last year and it can be flipped on its head very fast, that happened two or three times this evening on both ends with us and them but we always had that cushion which always kept us a bit ahead of them”.
All of their six points in the first quarter came from their half-back line, Dermot Coughlan landing a brace of two pointers with wing backs Joshua Moloney and Darragh Sexton also splitting the posts. “Dermot came up and kicked two great points for us, he is a great striker of the ball, very hard to stop when you get that momentum but St Breckans were coming at us, Jack Sheedy cut us open loads of times, we spoke about him a lot before the game but he was still able to find gaps and go. In the eleven vs eleven there are gaps there, that is what we need to work on for the next two weeks, can we find the gaps a bit better and not be relying on Dermot and the lads to come up and kick the scores”.
When St Breckans began to close the gap, composure was needed from last year’s beaten finalists and it arrived with Caoilfhionn O’Dea kicking two points. “He had an old man’s head on a young guy’s shoulders, when we really needed him he really stepped up for us so I’m delighted with that”.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, David admitted that Kilmurry Ibrickane can now alter their preparations over the next six weeks in advance of a quarter-final showing. “We’ve been carrying a good few knocks, not enough to keep lads away but we’ll be looking at that now and rather than drilling lads in training for the next two weeks we can give a lad a week off and mind themselves rather than us enduring any more damage or a slight injury whereas if we lost this game we’d have had to keep going. Wolfe Tones are a good team, they were very impressive with how they won the intermediate championship last year, I saw them in the final, they will take stopping”.
