*Clare captain Áine O’Loughlin. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
FACING WEXFORD on Saturday will give Clare’s senior camogie side an accurate barometer as to where they are.
Pleased with the win but plenty to work on was the reaction from Clare senior camogie manager John Carmody after seeing his charges open their 2025 league campaign with a big win over Westmeath on Saturday.
“As you will appreciate at this time of year, we are doing a lot of our training on astro turf and we seemed to spill a lot of ball today which we wouldn’t be happy with. We made hard work of winning possession in the middle third and we spoke about that at half time. We rectified that in the second half and we came out and added a nice bit to our first half tally and opened a gap”, the Kilmaley man said.
Another aspect of Saturday’s performance which pleased the manager was the fact that “we got to use eight subs today. There is competition for places. We have a huge game in Wexford next week and that will be a huge barometer as to where we are”.
He paid tribute to Westmeath saying “they brought a huge workrate today, they weren’t going to come up here and lie down. We got a professional job done but the focus now is very much on the Wexford game next week. They are favourites for the league and rightly so as they were in the final last year”.
Carmody continued, “we beat them last year in the championship in Ennis and we will take come confidence from that. I don’t think a Clare team has ever beaten Wexford in Wexford s we have to go after that. It’s a huge challenge for us”.
Concluding he said, “we had a good impact from the bench today, lots of potential. We have experience to come in. We finished the game strong which is a good sign. We will prepare well for the Wexford game and we will know more in a week’s time as to where we are”.
