*Ellie Hanrahan tries to shake off her opponent. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
FIVE defeats in seven outings saw Clare relegated from Division 2 of the Lidl Ladies Football National League but the county manager says their demotion occurred in November.
Speaking following Clare’s 4-22 0-5 trimming at the hands of neighbours Galway, Graham Shine said the decision of players not to commit for the season was the rea-son they dropped down to Division 3.
He said, “There’s a longer story than today. I was involved last year as coach and we got up from Division 3 but there are twelve of that panel gone since so we’ve a lot of young girls in the panel now. We’ve five Leaving Cert students, four of them started today and all of them did very well but just lack experience.
“So we didn’t really get relegated today, we probably got relegated last November when we didn’t get commitment from the players who brought us up to Division 2 last year. I’m from Kerry but probably in the last three years in Clare, there has been roughly a turnover of about 25 players. So it’s not today or yesterday that these things happen and of course it’s disappointing. I’m absolutely gutted for this group of girls who had put in four or five days a week training. So the commitment from the girls is unbelievable bit fundamentally this is essentially a young team and we’re going through a transition,” he added.
Galway’s class was too much for Clare, the Kerry man said. “We were up against a team that con-tested an All-Ireland Senior Final last year so we are disappointed with the result. We hate losing and hate being relegated but there’s a bigger picture there and we just have to trust these young girls that they can turn the corner for Clare again.
“There are probably ten 19 year olds playing at the moment so the Munster Senior B Championship will be a great opportunity to get more experience but also get some confidence back into them be-cause no-one likes losing or getting a hammering like that”.
Shine added, “That said, we’ve also eight or nine girls to come back from injury for the All-Ireland Championship so we’ll be in a much better place by then. Overall, it was a disappointing day but there’s a long year there yet”.
