*Clare senior hurling manager, Brian Lohan. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
SHOWINGS from the fresh faces on the Clare senior hurling team pleased Brian Lohan as his charges began their National Hurling League bid with a facile 4-27 0-14 win over Westmeath.
Adam Hogan, Jack Kirwan and Brandon O’Connell made their starting league debuts for the county seniors at corner back, midfield and wing-back respectively with David Conroy returning to the Clare colours for the first time in four years while Gearoid O’Grady and Keith Smyth made NHL debuts from the bench.
Displays of the young guns was pleasing for Lohan and his management. “We have a squad of over 40 and they all want to play. A couple of the new guys like Adam [Hogan], Jack [Kirwan] and Davy Conroy got their chances today and did really well.
“Jack did extremely well [to set up two goals]. He’s fairly robust, he’s a good runner and has no problem putting himself out there for the team. [Another big string to our bow this year is] Seadna [Morey] who was great there today. He does what he does and the more the game went on, the more powerful he got,” the Shannon native added.
Lohan felt frees were hard to come by from referee Paud O’Dwyer, Westmeath were given eleven placed balls in comparison to Clare’s seven over the course of seventy minutes. “We found it hard to get frees today but all these games are hard work and fair play to our lads, they worked really hard for the entire 70 minutes”.
A much tougher examination is on the cards this Saturday when Clare cross the border to renew acquaintances with Limerick. “Look, obviously there are bigger tests ahead but our aim is to try and get as many options as we can. We’ll address [the strength of our team for the Limerick game] during the week. For the moment we’re just hope that all the lads came out of this game okay. I think both teams will want to win it so we’ll see how it goes,” the Cratloe resident said.
