Clare GAA discussion thread

windy shepard henderson

Donald Trumped wrote: »

Lads that was putrid stuff from the Banner county senior footballers. Waterford brought massive energy and workrate, that Clare did not match. Time after time when Clare got into the Waterford 22, they were smothered up by three or four Waterford lads who were immense today. They had plenty of men back and forced Clare to shoot from distance which we were terrible at. Our shooting was shocking, taking the right option that Colm Collins has installed to the lads was not there. Above all else Clare just lacked energy and a zip to our play. To score only 1 point in the entire second half says it all really. They conceded the last 6 points of the game too.

For Waterford that was their finest 70 minutes plus for a long while. They played with great structure and honesty of effort. That's all you could ask of any team, Benji Whelan has done trojan work with the Deise men. He is an outstanding coach and you could see that the team reflected what Whelan has brought to the group.

For Clare, I just feel that they are at a crossroads with what they are trying to achieve here. We don't have the players that can kick from distance, barring Eoin Cleary. So they play a running game but that gets easily swallowed up by a well coached defensive team. A lot to ponder but at worst we have avoided the 1st round of the qualifiers, regardless of the Kerry result, but it looks like a massacre is on the way against Kerry in 3 weeks time, I'm afraid.

to be fair while it was a terrible second half form clare , waterfords defensive game plan was excellent , clare always struggle against teams of that nature , its the same system as what fermanagh use and we really need to get to grips with breaking down teams using it

there will be a number of key players coming back in to the side for the kerry game , sean o'donohue , cathal o'connor and david tubridy will be huge additions to the side , which will meen 1 of cormac murray/ gavin cooney , will start inside , 1 of dale masterson/ gearoid o'brien or kerian malone will feature on the 40 while 1 of sean collins/ cian o'dea conal o hanifinn or dean ryan will lose out in the half back line as a result , all of which played tonight

last year clare beat limerick by 18 points in the gaelic grounds , and went on the be trounced in killarney by 22 points the next day out , the last time waterford were in ennis we drew with them , winning the replay and pushing kerry all the way in the semi final

if you include the guys that are taken time off the panel clare were down 8 regular starters tonight , and in truth waterford would be closer to us then what we are to the top half of division 1 , this was always going to be a banana skin , especially when you see what london did against galway last week , kildare also struggled against wicklow tonight while tipperary were hammered at home to limerick ,the last week has shown just how close teams in division 4 are to the division 2 sides , and bottom half of division 1 even

i would look at the win differently and say yes we played bad , waterford were excellent in the second half especially in the tackle , but a win in the first round of the munster championship acts as a qualifier win and puts us in the 2nd round draw at worst and offers a free hit at one of the best teams in the country in the meantime

scorers tonight Clare

Eoin Cleary 0-6
Jamie Malone 0-2
Dean ryan 0-1

Waterford

Connor murray 0-2
jj hutchinson 0-2
dessie hutchinson 0-2
Shane Aherane 0-1
tadgh hoolahan 0-1

windy shepard henderson

LuckyGent88 wrote: »

Jaysus our footballers were very lucky. Sounds like we were absolutely rubbish. Only one point in the second half!!

Really thought we were continually improving but looks like we are going backwards.

I’ll take a one point win tomorrow though.

i wouldnt worry about the footballers , played poor enough but its better to be made work for a win in these type of games then win pulling up , last years hammering of limerick did nothing for us against kerry , plus loads of players to come back

in hurling , i imagine it will be a huge game for waterford tomorrow m they have been waiting years for a home championship game so they will be up for it , home advantage in munster is huge , only ourselves managed an away win in last years campaign

any sort of win for us would be huge

letowski

windy shepard henderson wrote: »

to be fair to shane , he was excellent in the last 3 championship games against wexford and galway last year , i agree wit your stance on kelly , especially when we had david reidy and shanahan playing so wel,l we had more options to replace him then we probably do now


in defence of the bench , ryan taylors performances have been underrated by many i think , while adian mccarthy , cooney who looked lively but a bit inexperienced in the league cathal mcinerney has never let us down off the bench and shanagher is an excellent impact sub also , i dont se a replacement midfielder but we have plenty of impact subs in backs and forwards

I think the loss of a couple of players has hurt our bench. Reidy, McGrath and Hayes from last years panel, with the injuries to Shanahan, O'Brien and Galvin and Cleary's suspension has stretched our panel for tomorrow. Shanahan is a blow, for example would be the center back tomorrow to replace Cleary. Hopefully McCarthy, Cooney and Taylor can make the step up because we will need them to contribute. McInerney and Shanagher can provide impact I think but I have been disappointed that Niall Deasy hasn't been able to push for a place this year. We can't afford any injuries in the backs, there is very little cover.

On a separate note, it was disappointing to hear Rory Hayes is going stateside this summer, he also probably would have started tomorrow. Not that I'm against lads heading off to enjoy themselves, it's a tough commitment being an intercounty player these days. But it would have been better if he had told the management sooner, it's left us in a pickle because we played him regularly in the league in the hope he could start this summer. We could have given that time to someone like O'Brien or Jason McCarthy. I remember when Galvin went abroad, he had it organised beforehand with Davy and came back later on the year. Anyway it doesn't matter now.

windy shepard henderson

letowski wrote: »

I think the loss of a couple of players has hurt our bench. Reidy, McGrath and Hayes from last years panel, with the injuries to Shanahan, O'Brien and Galvin and Cleary's suspension has stretched our panel for tomorrow. Shanahan is a blow, for example would be the center back tomorrow to replace Cleary. Hopefully McCarthy, Cooney and Taylor can make the step up because we will need them to contribute. McInerney and Shanagher can provide impact I think but I have been disappointed that Niall Deasy hasn't been able to push for a place this year. We can't afford any injuries in the backs, there is very little cover.

On a separate note, it was disappointing to hear Rory Hayes is going stateside this summer, he also probably would have started tomorrow. Not that I'm against lads heading off to enjoy themselves, it's a tough commitment being an intercounty player these days. But it would have been better if he had told the management sooner, it's left us in a pickle because we played him regularly in the league in the hope he could start this summer. We could have given that time to someone like O'Brien or Jason McCarthy. I remember when Galvin went abroad, he had it organised beforehand with Davy and came back later on the year. Anyway it doesn't matter now.

strange one about hayes , didnt feature all year came on against galway in the second half of the replay and looked the part , played really well all year in the league and then decides to leave the group , to be fair to him as you say i would never stand in anyone's way of traveling or enjoying themselves but rory was just making a breakthrough on to the main panel and if not a starter the first back to come on

cooney is young , he caused havoc against waterford in the league game in the first half with limited ball , won a penalty and had two great goal chances and won 3 or 4 scorable frees , i imagine the managements thinking is if shane o 'donnell is in the same position tomorrow more of them chances get converted

i was unsure about taylor for a long time , watched him for the intermediates before the senior games in munster for years and couldnt really make my mind up about him if he could make the step up , but i think he has done really well when called upon this year , he is a serious worker , maybe not the best shooter in the world but has serious work rate

shannagher and mcinerney are excellent options off the bench , mcinerney in my opinion is very underrated still by many in this county , i see him as a bit of a McMenamin , look at the havoc he caused against tipperary two years ago in the all ireland 1/4 final was injured for most of the championship last year

supernova5

apart from Cleary's suspension that's 6 players down from last year, we saw how injuries, suspensions and unavailable players destroyed Waterford's challenge last year

it really will take something special from this Clare panel to make any progress in this year's championship and with the 3 consecutive games coming up to finish the round robin I'd be shocked if their season stretched any further than mid June

keeponhurling

There’s not too much between any of the Munster teams in terms of quality (ok, maybe Limerick a bit ahead)

As long as we turn up in good shape, well organized and perform well we can progress.

I’m a bit worried about the back line today.
Discipline was awful in the league , and we’re down a few players.
Those Bennett’s are serious hurlers, and Mahoney will convert any score able free we concede

Donald Trumped

Clare 0-9 Waterford 0-7 in the Munster minor hurling championship. I'm afraid Clare are playing with the s......I'll say no more. So too are the deise men by all accounts. Negative hurling tactics is rampant at U-17 it seems.

LuckyGent88

That’s a good win for the minors anyway.
GAAGO up and running so hopefully we get a great game. Pitch looks in great nick and perfect conditions so should be a cracker.

Clare by a point hopefully!!

LuckyGent88

Very good performance so far. Think they can even play better to be fair. Making the correct decisions which is the most important part. Varying our play well too. Long and short ball. Harsh free on conlon for disallowed goal.

4Ad

Keep good ball going in to the full forward line as we have the beating of their full back line, and we have a great chance.

funnyname

SOD picking up from where he left off last year, super to see!

Kristopherus

Waterford getting dirty.

Kristopherus

Owens doing his best for Waterford:mad:

LuckyGent88

Just about. But a huge crucial win. Frees frees and more frees!!!

4Ad

We let Waterford back into that. Lucky to get that side line ball, who cares once we got the win..

deaddonkey15

As usual, doing our best to leave another win behind us. Nevertheless, a great result and puts us in a great position to finish in the top 3.

Unfortunately, Jack Browne again showed that he is a liability. That petulant swing of the hurley to hand Waterford a free and a point towards the end was utter stupidity. I have a feeling he will cost us more scores than he prevents over the next few weeks.

Clareman

We did out best to throw it away today but an away win is a huge advantage to us now.

We turned off completely at the end and couldn't cope with either the Waterford or out own puck out, the subs coming on made a big difference and they helped out with a couple of points. Some of the decision making at the end was shocking, some bad frees and aimless shots, Tony Kelly had a good game overall but he took a ridiculous shot at the end when keeping possession would have been the better option.

letowski

Im worn out from that to be honest. Thought we had lost it there. Taylor's point was cruical at the finish. Overall you would have to be delighted with the effort the lads put it. A group of us gathered at the corner to clap them off at full time, we got full value for our travel down to Walsh Park today.

Stuff that we needed to go right, such as discipline, Duggan converting frees and a Browne settling at center back went well. I have been critical of the management at times during their tenure, but they deserve credit today for sure. Another positive is I think there is much more to come from this team. Conlon and Galvin were very rusty today after both dealing with injuries in recent weeks. They will improve as will O'Donnell who should get more sharper. We have Cleary to come back too.

I guess we were always going to get a strong rally from Waterford at some stage, and we did ride our luck for a finish. I think the bench did OK, McCarthy worked really hard but Ian Galvin is a loss as he is always good for 2 points off the bench.

I though Kelly was excellent today, while Diarmuid Ryan and David Fitzgearld hurled very well down the left side. McInerney played very well too imo. I think the Conlon/O'Donnell duo inside can be deadly once they shake off the rust.

letowski

Also well done to the under 17s today. They deserved their win. I think Conor Hegarty looks like a real talent. Very composed in possession and took some nice scores. The O'Meara at center back and Galvin at center forward played well. First time I've seen Shane Meehan play and he looks good too, very tigerish and pacey but he needs to work on his striking. That can be coached. I think there are 8 players u16 (from that u15 AI winning team) so hopefully we can get a couple of good players out of this group.

Clareman

That's a serious minor team, there's some great talent coming through, Podge Collins nephew started today, he won the Feile skills competition a couple of years ago

windy shepard henderson

letowski wrote: »

Im worn out from that to be honest. Thought we had lost it there. Taylor's point was cruical at the finish. Overall you would have to be delighted with the effort the lads put it. A group of us gathered at the corner to clap them off at full time, we got full value for our travel down to Walsh Park today.

Stuff that we needed to go right, such as discipline, Duggan converting frees and a Browne settling at center back went well. I have been critical of the management at times during their tenure, but they deserve credit today for sure. Another positive is I think there is much more to come from this team. Conlon and Galvin were very rusty today after both dealing with injuries in recent weeks. They will improve as will O'Donnell who should get more sharper. We have Cleary to come back too.

I guess we were always going to get a strong rally from Waterford at some stage, and we did ride our luck for a finish. I think the bench did OK, McCarthy worked really hard but Ian Galvin is a loss as he is always good for 2 points off the bench.

I though Kelly was excellent today, while Diarmuid Ryan and David Fitzgearld hurled very well down the left side. McInerney played very well too imo. I think the Conlon/O'Donnell duo inside can be deadly once they shake off the rust.

to be fair if your 6 points up at half time or 10 minutes into the second half nowadays it counts for very little , just going watching the two games from today now , huge win in fairness especially with tipperary our next game , the break next week will suite us if cork and waterford fail to win next week you would be looking at one win required for our last 3 games to get out of the group , obviously we want to win all of them , but this is a huge win , we picked up 6 points last year after losing our first game in cork so we now have something to really work with


i know a lot of people watching on tv will think we did our best to throw it away , in a tight field and with a ref bowing to the home crowed all day they were always going to comeback at some stage i think we did excellent to see it out

one worry i had was davy mac was again cleaned out under a high ball , i doubt he won one over his head , he kept stephan bennett out of the game especially when the ball was played in low but over his head he struggles , we really need to look at the option of cleary in there or even patrick o connor , dan shanahan caused havoc in the last ten minutes especially from high balls he won the bulk of the frees awarded or was involved in scores ,
browne looks way more comfortable at number 6 , gave away 2 needless frees but for his standard that is a huge improvement , david fitz had an impressive game also was actually a bit surprised at how well he did to be honest

again the forwards played well as expected and when the 3 of shanagher conlon and o'donell were on at the end they looked imposing ,one criticism of the lads in midfield who worked hard in fairness was there delivery in to the inside forwards in the second half was poor at times

Figerty

deaddonkey15 wrote: »

As usual, doing our best to leave another win behind us. Nevertheless, a great result and puts us in a great position to finish in the top 3.

Unfortunately, Jack Browne again showed that he is a liability. That petulant swing of the hurley to hand Waterford a free and a point towards the end was utter stupidity. I have a feeling he will cost us more scores than he prevents over the next few weeks.

Contrast that against Shane O'Donnell who didn't do that in the first half when he shadowed his many into giving away a line ball. A soft flake was all the referee needed to blow the whistle but he held is head.

keeponhurling

Besides that though, Browne played ok I Thought

letowski

windy shepard henderson wrote: »

to be fair if your 6 points up at half time or 10 minutes into the second half nowadays it counts for very little , just going watching the two games from today now , huge win in fairness especially with tipperary our next game , the break next week will suite us if cork and waterford fail to win next week you would be looking at one win required for our last 3 games to get out of the group , obviously we want to win all of them , but this is a huge win , we picked up 6 points last year after losing our first game in cork so we now have something to really work with


i know a lot of people watching on tv will think we did our best to throw it away , in a tight field and with a ref bowing to the home crowed all day they were always going to comeback at some stage i think we did excellent to see it out

one worry i had was davy mac was again cleaned out under a high ball , i doubt he won one over his head , he kept stephan bennett out of the game especially when the ball was played in low but over his head he struggles , we really need to look at the option of cleary in there or even patrick o connor , dan shanahan caused havoc in the last ten minutes especially from high balls he won the bulk of the frees awarded or was involved in scores ,
browne looks way more comfortable at number 6 , gave away 2 needless frees but for his standard that is a huge improvement , david fitz had an impressive game also was actually a bit surprised at how well he did to be honest

again the forwards played well as expected and when the 3 of shanagher conlon and o'donell were on at the end they looked imposing ,one criticism of the lads in midfield who worked hard in fairness was there delivery in to the inside forwards in the second half was poor at times

The high balls at the end did cause us problems for sure and must be looked at. I think if Conor Cleary comes back in at 6, he can hold the center and McInerney and Patch can break the balls out in front for Cleary to pick up. The problem I think with McInerney and Patch is that they aren't proper stoppers, they want to out hurl their markers. When Maurice and Aussie went inside they needed to be spoiling the ball, not trying to catch the ball. It's a concern but hopefully its something that can be rectified.

I thought the main issue with the lack of quality ball inside was Colm Galvin being mostly out of the game. He hasn't done much hurling in recent weeks and was definitely rusty. We are usually at our best in attack when he gets on alot of possession and distributes it inside. For some reason Colm never plays that well against Waterford. but again, I think we can make improvements in this area too. Golden put in a solid shift, but needs to be more assertive in his use of possession.

Just looking at the Tipp/Cork result, it really focuses the mind for the June bank holiday weekend. If they win against Waterford in Thurles next week, they will be coming like a freight train to town. Tipp are a different animal when their confidence is up, they get their crisp stick passing going and get more daring in their shot selection. Donal and Gerry has to manage this 3 week break appropriately, we don't want to get off to a slow start against them, they have too much firepower to reel in. But htat's for different day to worry about, we can relax next weekend.

windy shepard henderson

keeponhurling wrote: »

Besides that though, Browne played ok I Thought

He did actually play well , looks better suted to the half backline , but as said above there probably will be a change for the Tipperary game

windy shepard henderson

letowski wrote: »

windy shepard henderson wrote: »

to be fair if your 6 points up at half time or 10 minutes into the second half nowadays it counts for very little , just going watching the two games from today now , huge win in fairness especially with tipperary our next game , the break next week will suite us if cork and waterford fail to win next week you would be looking at one win required for our last 3 games to get out of the group , obviously we want to win all of them , but this is a huge win , we picked up 6 points last year after losing our first game in cork so we now have something to really work with


i know a lot of people watching on tv will think we did our best to throw it away , in a tight field and with a ref bowing to the home crowed all day they were always going to comeback at some stage i think we did excellent to see it out

one worry i had was davy mac was again cleaned out under a high ball , i doubt he won one over his head , he kept stephan bennett out of the game especially when the ball was played in low but over his head he struggles , we really need to look at the option of cleary in there or even patrick o connor , dan shanahan caused havoc in the last ten minutes especially from high balls he won the bulk of the frees awarded or was involved in scores ,
browne looks way more comfortable at number 6 , gave away 2 needless frees but for his standard that is a huge improvement , david fitz had an impressive game also was actually a bit surprised at how well he did to be honest

again the forwards played well as expected and when the 3 of shanagher conlon and o'donell were on at the end they looked imposing ,one criticism of the lads in midfield who worked hard in fairness was there delivery in to the inside forwards in the second half was poor at times

Just looking at the Tipp/Cork result, it really focuses the mind for the June bank holiday weekend. If they win against Waterford in Thurles next week, they will be coming like a freight train to town. Tipp are a different animal when their confidence is up, they get their crisp stick passing going and get more daring in their shot selection. Donal and Gerry has to manage this 3 week break appropriately, we don't want to get off to a slow start against them, they have too much firepower to reel in. But htat's for different day to worry about, we can relax next weekend.

Definitely true about tipp being a confidance team , it was probably the reason we beat them last year , the win over cork is huge and puts a diffrent light over them now , there is no doubting there tallents but no one knows what Tipperary will turn up at times , french rugby of the hurling world in recent years

BnB

Apart from what has been said already.... I thought Cathal Malone had a fine game. He was right in from of me in the first half and he won an amount dirty ball and laid it all off very well.

Tactically, Waterford were very poor today. They persisted for close to 70 minutes trying to play short balls out through their full back line and the Clare forwards were doing great work to put the pressure on them. It was only in the last 5 minutes when they started to delivery direct fast ball that they really got into the game.

windy shepard henderson

:

Figerty wrote: »

deaddonkey15 wrote: »

As usual, doing our best to leave another win behind us. Nevertheless, a great result and puts us in a great position to finish in the top 3.

Unfortunately, Jack Browne again showed that he is a liability. That petulant swing of the hurley to hand Waterford a free and a point towards the end was utter stupidity. I have a feeling he will cost us more scores than he prevents over the next few weeks.

Contrast that against Shane O'Donnell who didn't do that in the first half when he shadowed his many into giving away a line ball. A soft flake was all the referee needed to blow the whistle but he held is head.

I have loads of reasons for defending jack , but he had been fould before that swing and not awarded a free , he did have 2 stupid ones but had a really good game ( .......glory kilmihil ) ��ðŸ :pac:

Clareman

Great win by the hurlers yesterday. We seemed to adjust better to the conditions than Waterford did, we played a 2 man full forward line with loads of space in front of them, I thought Podge did great work tracking back and when he went off we were under a lot of pressure in the middle of the pitch. Looking at each line of the pitch, Tuohy did well with his distribution and stood up against the frees at the end. The full back line was ok until there was high ball coming in and then they couldn't cope, this will be a massive weakness for us against Tipp. The half back line were well protected with midfield coming back to help them then midfield was helped with the half forwads and Podge coming back. The 2 man full forward line was "almost" brilliant, you could see that they were both rusty, for example the goal SoD was blocked down and Conlon took way too many steps, for the disallowed goal in the first half Conlon should have been smarter than that. I've been a big critic of Kelly on here, yesterday I thought he had a great game except for a stupid wide at the very end which is always his weakness, also, it helped that Waterford didn't mark him and left him a free run of the pitch. Duggan has changed his free taking style as well which looks a lot more suited to intercounty play, he gets the ball higher faster.

Looking to the Tipp game, having them in Ennis will suit us, make the pitch as small as possible if they go with a 2 man full forward line with acres of space in front of them like they did against Cork yesterday we will be destroyed, Cleary back holding in front of the full back line will help a lot with this but that could just open up the middle of the pitch for others to exploit.

Clareman

Oops, meant to alsoo highlight the fact that we dropped off completely again, we got so far ahead that we just turned off to let Waterford back into it completely when we should have pulled away and won handily, there was total panic any time the ball was coming in and the default act was to foul.