Darragh Lohan signs an autograph. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
A FIRST SENOR championship start was the reward for Darragh Lohan as Clare powered past Dublin on Saturday but he hadn’t as much notice as others may like for such a run-out.
At the team meeting in the hotel before Saturday’s game was when Darragh found out that he was in the starting lineup for the All-Ireland hurling quarter final clash with Dublin at the TUS Gaelic grounds in Limerick.
“We had a meeting in the hotel before the match, David Mac (McInerney) was struggling with an injury so I got in”, the Wolfe Tones clubman told The Clare Echo moments after he had played a leading role in Clare’s easy victory which has set up an All-Ireland semi-final date with Kilkenny on July 9 at Croke Park (throw in at 4p.m.).
Acknowledging that they had recorded a comfortable win he said, “the boys up top did savage work and that made our lives a little easier at the back, the ball wasn’t coming in as good as it was earlier, savage work by the boys up front today”.
On his own thoughts in the early exchanges when Clare were racking up a high tally of wides, Darragh reflected, “there’s always going to be mistakes in the game. It was good the way we responded after the wides and to put up a good score, the quality of forwards we have is brilliant”.
Looking ahead to the semi-final and the team’s clash with Kilkenny the Shannon man said, “Kilkenny are obviously very good, we saw that last year but we will be hoping to right last year’s performance. We didn’t really give a good account of ourselves so we will be hoping to rectify that in two weeks time”.
Injury concerns are misfortunate but give opportunities for other panel members like himself, the Mary Immaculate College graduate noted. “Obviously it’s disappointing when we are missing lads. Conor (Cleary) has been gone for the last two games and he is a massive massive loss. Brian’s (Lohan) attitude would be the next man up and that was me today and I got a go today. I will need to have a big two weeks in training and hopefully get back in there, We will be looking forward to two weeks time in Croke Park”.
