*Joe Maxwell, Seán Connelly and Danny Williamson of the victorious Parteen/Meelick Junior A side. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
PARTEEN/MEELICK may have been lacking experience but they made up for it with fitness and speed to win the Junior A football championship, manager Liam O’Connell has said.
Intermediate football in 2027 awaits the South Clare club after they defeated O’Currys on Sunday 2-9 1-5. It means they will be an intermediate dual club next year with the club’s hurlers lining out in the Clare PIHC.
Outscoring their opponents from the Loop Head Peninsula 2-6 0-0 for the final twenty seven minutes of the tie saw Parteen/Meelick lift the Michael Toner Memorial Cup and seal their promotion to the second tier.
Manager of the Parteen/Meelick side, Liam O’Connell felt their superior fitness paved the way to championship glory. “We’re a very young team so we probably lack in experience but there is a high level of fitness among the guys, they are serious athletes, like even the lads coming off the bench, we brought on two eighteen year olds in the last ten minutes so we had plenty of legs and that is probably where we caught O’Currys, they didn’t match us in terms of fitness and speed, that is the way football has gone, that is the modern game it is all about speed and speed of transition especially. That fitness and speed came to fruition for the boys”.
O’Currys started the second half with a bang, hitting Parteen/Meelick for 1-2 inside three minutes in what O’Connell labelled a “crazy” period of the game. “We were a little asleep at the wheel for the first five or six minutes, then we had a shot blocked on the line and we were scratching our heads thinking maybe this isn’t our day but our guys fought and fought, they won an awful lot of breaking ball in the second half and they were relentless going at it and at it. Goals win games and those couple of goals gave us massive belief, the penalty was great and we knew we were growing in confidence. To be honest, at half time we were happy because we knew we had to ride the storm in the first half, we were nervous and once we got over the nerves and settled we knew we had the legs”.
Getting over the line in the Junior A decider is “massive” for the club, the Mungret native outlined. “In fairness they have been knocking on the door for the last few years. Around two years ago we lost a quarter-final against Clarecastle, it was very disappointing, last year we had great hopes but we came up against a Killimer team who took control in the last five or six minutes. We knew we had the players, getting Jack Kirwan has been a huge thing, having an inter-county guy like that around the middle of the field, Tom Collins and Seán Connelly our captains have been huge men around the middle of the field. It was a titanic battle, it went up and down, O’Currys are a serious team and we knew we had to match them for experience but how do you match it when you don’t have it, so it is a lot of hard work, a lot of running, belief and the boys showed they had belief today”.
A former selector with the Limerick minor footballers, Liam was coach to the Mungret St Paul’s ladies football side that won the Munster Junior club championship last year. Though disappointed to see his own club dethroned by Killdimo-Pallaskenry in the Limerick SFC, the weekend ended on a high with Parteen/Meelick’s success.
He told The Clare Echo, “This is my third season with this team, an incredible bunch of lads, it is great to be part of it, when I went first went into the club they were so ambitious for football in the Parteen/Meelick area and I just wanted to be part of that. I’m delighted to get the opportunity, I’m only a cog in the wheel, a lot of it is down to our players, coaches past and present who have done a huge amount of work for them so I’m delighted for the community”.
