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*David McNamara is expected to miss Sunday’s semi-final for Éire Óg. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
TRYING to overcome St Joseph’s Miltown for the second time in over a month will be “tough” for champions Éire Óg.
St Michael’s Park in Kilmihil was the setting at the end of August when Éire Óg defeated St Joseph’s Miltwown 1-22 0-12 to seal top spot in Group 1 but the sides meet again in Cusack Park on Sunday with the winner advancing to the county final.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Éire Óg manager Shane Daniels admitted the task of beating the same opponents in the one year is not easy. “It is obviously tough, the first game we played was a game when the two of us were already through, you can’t take much learnings out of it to be honest. The way the structure is with the football at the moment, there is a high possibility that you will play a team again because there’s only three groups and you had three teams come out of our group so as the championship goes on there is a high probability you’ll be playing them again. It happened us last year with Doora/Barefield so it is something we have to get on with”.
He continued, “We’re under no illusions what is coming, Miltown are a fantastic team, they have a mixture of youth coming through with experience and top class players that we know all about like Eoin Cleary who are top players, they have a new management team that seem very hungry and are doing the right thing which is good to see as a neutral too, we’re under no illusions it will be a huge battle on Sunday”.
Back to back doubles at senior level cannot come to fruition following Éire Óg’s defeat to Inagh/Kilnamona in Sunday’s Clare SHC hurling semi-final. “We’re fully focused at the moment coming on the back of a disappointing weekend for the hurlers so we have a job to do with our medical team to get lads right and fresh, the next few days will be recovery and we’ll try get a good session in before the weekend and be good to go”.
Exiting the Clare SHC won’t impact on the motivation levels of the dual players for the Ennis club, the Clare selector said. “The motivation of our dual players over the last number of years has been phenomenal, they go out every week and play games every week, they want to win every game they play, it is a short turnaround between last Sunday and the Sunday coming, their heads will be fully focused on trying to get a win, they have been amazing with what they have been doing for the club over the last few years, their focus has never changed or shifted, we’re extremely lucky to have that crop of players”.
David McNamara (fractured rib) and Aaron Fitzgerald (foot) are the fresh injury concerns for the Townies who remain without Colm Walsh O’Loghlen (knee) and Gavin Cooney (achilles). “We have two or three lads with fairly substantial knocks so we have to assess them as we go, there’s definitely two of them possibly out, we’ll have to take the rest day by day,” Shane outlined.
