*Eamonn Foudy saves David Reidy’s penalty. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
INAGH/KILNAMONA produced ‘a total team effort’ to seal their place in the Clare SHC semi-finals for the first time since 2021.
A previously unbeaten Éire Óg were eliminated from the championship on Saturday with Inagh/Kilnamona running out 2-16 0-20 winners in Cusack Park.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Inamona manager Tomás Kelly said, “It’s great, we weren’t looking at a semi-final or anything like that, it was just a matter of trying to win this game and see where it took us, we knew the battle we were in for, the calibre of players and the people involved with Éire Óg, we were just delighted to get over the line in the end and show a bit of character when it was needed”.
Their full-back line of Keith White, Shane Woods and Conor Rynne were excellent on a day when their defence limited Shane O’Donnell and David Reidy to a combined two points from play. “That is down to two things, the guys out the field limiting the supply into them and making it not as good as it should be and it is down to the lads at the back spoiling it, getting a hurley in or a flick in because you are talking about two of the best hurlers in the country. We’re delighted not only with the backs but the workrate from the forwards to slow down the ball that was coming in,” Kelly explained on how they negated the influence of the two county forwards.
He continued, “It was a total team effort from the guys that started to the finishers at the end who made the difference, it was a small bit of resilience when it was turning against us in the second half, Darren Cullinan got a great score at a crucial time, that was the one which got us over the line, the key was the collective and the boost we had from the bench”.
Labelled as a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ team by several hurling pundits in the county, Tomás remarked of such labels, “That will always be thrown at us, we can’t do anything about soft talk like that”.
Eoghan Foudy’s goal when the game was a mere twenty five seconds old was an ideal start for the Clare Cup finalists. “It was a tonic, the last time we were here against Éire Óg things didn’t go well for us and they didn’t go well from the start, we never recovered from that so to get a good start was a tonic for our confidence, we were able to ease ourselves into the game and the lads could play the brand of hurling that they are capable of”.
To have advanced to the last four at the expense of one of the favourites brings a sense of satisfaction particularly with the manner in which they were written off following a first round loss to Scariff. “In sport you have more bad days than good days, there is nothing we can with the talk that surrounds it but you definitely have more bad days than good days, today is a good day and we’ll savour it, we’ll have a look at the next stage tomorrow morning”.
Though an initial setback, that Scariff game appeared to be a help for The Combo in finding their best fifteen as demonstrated with their response that has included wins over O’Callaghans Mills, Broadford and Éire Óg. “We were coming into the unknown a little bit, we’ve a lot of guys playing inter-county hurling, a lot of clubs do and we were trying to filter them back in, we had a lot of injuries, we’re in a lucky position that we have a lot of good quality hurlers and sometimes it can be hard to put them in the right position and find the right positions, we learned an awful lot from the first day. In sport, you either win or learn, we were able to learn and react from the disappointing performance the first day out”.
