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*Marco Cleary leads the attack for Éire Óg. Photograph: Ruthie Griffin
A RETURN OF 3-9 from inside forwards Danny Russell and Marco Cleary has clearly demonstrated the emphasis Éire Óg are placing on their talented full-forward line.
County champions Éire Óg kicked off their defence of the Canon Hamilton with a 4-18 0-18 victory over Crusheen on Saturday, the pace of their attack seeing them cut open the opposing defence to create the four goal chances which they converted.
Russell hit 2-6 including a penalty, Marco Cleary had 1-3 from play while midfielder Darren Moroney scored their third goal on the cusp of half-time.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Éire Óg manager Gerry O’Connor outlined that they need to be creating more opportunities for the talent they have in their attack. “Overall we are happy with the way we managed the first half. We are disappointed that we didn’t create as many goalscoring opportunities as we would have liked considering the full forward line we have. We have been working an awful lot on getting ball into our full forward line. We like to think we have a very good potent attacking force in there”.
Goalkeeper Darragh Stack had a key influence on proceedings, O’Connor felt. “Darragh Stack managed the game brilliantly against the wind. We varied our puckouts, We were able to go long and short, we were able to get out and get ball into our full forward line”.
Heading into Saturday’s championship opener title holders Eire Og “weren’t looking any further than this opening round, We knew Crusheen were going to be a huge challenge physically, they always are, they are a proud hurling team and they will always turn up”, O’Connor said.
He continued, “they started really well and they had the aid of the breeze. We probably got a goal from a penalty, against the run of play and that took a bit of the bite out of them”.
While happy with the win O’Connor was “disappointed with some things. We had six or seven poor wides in that first half. We didn’t seem to be able to gauge the fact that the wind was across the field”.
Gerry told The Clare Echo, “It’s important to get over the first hurdle and get embedded in the championship. We have another big game in the park in two weeks time against Scariff. They will be very wounded after their result in the first round. The Rodgers brothers could have had four goals between them in the first fifteen minutes. I don’t think the score really reflected how good Scariff are”.
Meanwhile, Crusheen manager, Gerry O’Grady noted, “goals were the difference. They were ruthless in terms if they got a goal chance. There was some very good forward play from them in terms of how they opened us up. I have to commend them”.
O’Grady who is in his first season as manager said they needed to have been in front at half time, having had the wind advantage in Gurteen. “There was a big wind in it and being down at half time it was always going to be an uphill challenge in the second half. We held it together fairly well in that second half all things considered”.
Crusheen’s development will take time, the two-time Clare SHC winning captain said, “we are building a new team and it takes time. There was a very good effort from the lads today. We kept it going, kept the heads up and kept trying. Any mistake we made was punished and we must be able to take the learnings from that. No matter what the result we have to take learnings, reflect on the game, see what went wrong and see what improvements can be made for round two”.
