Clare GAA Discussion - 2024 All Ireland Hurling Champions

Clareman

djr15 wrote: »

The amount of times lads were behind the WX backs the last day was shocking and if they are being directed to stay inside they should be being coached to move laterally.
Which poses the question, are they being given one to one coaching?
I am not knocking Lohan or any previous MGMT for that matter, but these are basic things.
It was like hitting a ball against a wall for the last 10 mins.

You see it in the NFL or rugby, how players get individual coaching to work on their weaknesses.
That level of detail is clearly a lot of work, and you could argue that hurling is too fast and dynamic for that, but I do think 2 or 3 minor areas of improvement for each player after a game as a feedback and development tool would be very useful.
They say you learn more from losses than wins, but if we want to compete year in year out we need to learn from every game.
Marginal tactical/mental improvements in multiple areas are much easier to accumulate over a huge improvement in one specific area
e.g. Look at how Limerick treat possession from side-lines. It is a ground stroke/pass rather than a “hit is as far as you can approach”. (could be a marginal improvement for us)
Even TK the last day hit a side-line directly to an unmarked WX back.
With no Munster title and only 4 final appearances since ’98 we need to really assess where we are and where we are going.

OK we have had a couple of runs at all Irelands outside of 2002 and 2013, but I feel we should have more to show for the last 20 years than we do.

Well said and I agree 100%, if you saw the Sunday Game they highlighted the KK forwards never stopped running and the ball was always played to them, Clare forwards seem to stand still until the ball is played but the ball is played in front of them so the backs win it.

In Clare we have a history of worrying about our backs, 1 or 2 forwards would do us but we've always needed a sweeper or bring players back, this goes back to underage teams where historically in Clare the best player is put at 6 and it goes from there.

djr15

Agreed, that was always the way underage.
Build from the back up.

I heard it said a number of years ago, that TK would be our long term centre back.
I almost cried.

We have plenty of legs in defence, it's up front we are short.
Without duggan and conlon around it is a chance for others to nail down a spot.
Hopefully we throw the shackles off Saturday and give it a right go.

Clareman wrote: »

Well said and I agree 100%, if you saw the Sunday Game they highlighted the KK forwards never stopped running and the ball was always played to them, Clare forwards seem to stand still until the ball is played but the ball is played in front of them so the backs win it.

In Clare we have a history of worrying about our backs, 1 or 2 forwards would do us but we've always needed a sweeper or bring players back, this goes back to underage teams where historically in Clare the best player is put at 6 and it goes from there.

letowski

djr15 wrote: »

The amount of times lads were behind the WX backs the last day was shocking and if they are being directed to stay inside they should be being coached to move laterally.
Which poses the question, are they being given one to one coaching?
I am not knocking Lohan or any previous MGMT for that matter, but these are basic things.
It was like hitting a ball against a wall for the last 10 mins.

.

Yes, this has been an issue for quite a while, going back to last spring. Clare are not getting enough scoring out of the inside line. Conlon last spring was struggling to make an impact at full forward earlier in the year for example.

I think there are two issues.

First, the ball going in just isn't on the same level you see Limerick or Tipperary's inside forwards get. That's OK because they have their brand of hurling well refined at this stage. But I think Clare are missing Colm Galvin as he is the best link man in the county. The last time we were maximising the return out of the full forward line was in the summer of 2018, when Conlon and O'Donnell were in red hot form. But it was also not a coincidence that it coincided with Clare having their two best distributors in the field, Colm Galvin and Jamie Shanahan. As an example in the first half of the 2018 Munster final, John Conlon was going to town against Cork but the service he was getting was outstanding.

With regards to the match on Saturday, in the second half we went with Reidy and Taylor inside with Shane O'Donnell coming out the field. Taylor and Reidy are really more midfield players than natural full/corner forwards and it showed. Guilfoyle plays a good bit at full forward, but his movement isn't great, I don't think he has done enough to hold down a place the next day. I think Clare would be better served starting someone like Aaron Cunningham or Cathal McInerney high up the field. But Lohan really needs to figure out a solution because we can't rely on Kelly score 1-5 every day from midfield.

djr15

The more we discuss this the more worried I become.
I think we need to pull a stroke here to get a result.

Anything to be said for putting McInerney straight into midfield and shoving TK forward?
Pull Reidy or Taylor to midfield and put the onus on quick ball into space for SoD and TK. (weather dependant)
Throw another shooter up there possibly Cunningham.

A previous point made about goals being required is standing out to me -2 may needed to advance.

Clareman

Lets be honest with ourselves, at the start of the championship we knew we didn't have much hope of progressing through Munster as we would have had to get through the last 2 All Ireland champions to get to a final, our best hope was a decent run in the qualifier, that's where we are at now, if you had told us at the start that we beat Laois and Wexford by 7 and 1 points respectively you'd have settled for those results and hoped for a win in the quarter final. We on the back of 3 games, 1 terrible performance, 1 poor performance and 1 decent performance, so far we've had a decent season, at the weekend we've a chance to have a good season by beating Waterford. As I've said before this isn't a young team or a team that needs to be rebuilt, this is a team of 27/28 year olds who have an All Ireland medal in their back pocket, All Ireland semi finals in my opinion are the minimum standard we should expect but in the past decade we've only been in 2 so quarter finals I guess are the base line.

Clareman

djr15 wrote: »

The more we discuss this the more worried I become.
I think we need to pull a stroke here to get a result.

Anything to be said for putting McInerney straight into midfield and shoving TK forward?
Pull Reidy or Taylor to midfield and put the onus on quick ball into space for SoD and TK. (weather dependant)
Throw another shooter up there possibly Cunningham.

A previous point made about goals being required is standing out to me -2 may needed to advance.

I don't think we need to pull a stroke, last year we beat them by a point in Waterford and the year before we beat them by 9 points at home, they have as many new/missing players as we have so we should be looking to win without a stroke. Saying that, it does appear that they are on the way up and we are on the way down.

Treble double

Clareman wrote: »

Lets be honest with ourselves, at the start of the championship we knew we didn't have much hope of progressing through Munster as we would have had to get through the last 2 All Ireland champions to get to a final, our best hope was a decent run in the qualifier, that's where we are at now, if you had told us at the start that we beat Laois and Wexford by 7 and 1 points respectively you'd have settled for those results and hoped for a win in the quarter final. We on the back of 3 games, 1 terrible performance, 1 poor performance and 1 decent performance, so far we've had a decent season, at the weekend we've a chance to have a good season by beating Waterford. As I've said before this isn't a young team or a team that needs to be rebuilt, this is a team of 27/28 year olds who have an All Ireland medal in their back pocket, All Ireland semi finals in my opinion are the minimum standard we should expect but in the past decade we've only been in 2 so quarter finals I guess are the base line.

With what Lohan has had to deal with, first of all the hassle he had to go through to get the blooming job and secondly being hit with so many withdrawals and injuries to key players I think as it stands he has had a good season and next weekend is very much bonus territory.

I don't expect Clare to beat Waterford, I was very impressed with them last Sunday, I think Cahill will detail a runner for Kelly and if that reduces his scoring return by 1/3 that could be enough to win them the game.
But you can be sure of one thing with this team, they will leave it all out on the field, and that is very positive.

djr15

In fairness given the personell we are missing this is a very differernt year to anything in the last 10 or so seasons.
Without a definitive plan and asking questions of WF we will be comforably beaten.
The murmerings throughout the country are if you stop TK you stop Clare.
Going on what we have seen you cannot argue with that… which is why I suggest something different is required.
Theres no point accepting they are probably are a stornger team than us and hoping for the best, we have been doing that for long enough.

Clareman wrote: »

I don't think we need to pull a stroke, last year we beat them by a point in Waterford and the year before we beat them by 9 points at home, they have as many new/missing players as we have so we should be looking to win without a stroke. Saying that, it does appear that they are on the way up and we are on the way down.

Clareman

Treble double wrote: »

With what Lohan has had to deal with, first of all the hassle he had to go through to get the blooming job and secondly being hit with so many withdrawals and injuries to key players I think as it stands he has had a good season and next weekend is very much bonus territory.

I don't expect Clare to beat Waterford, I was very impressed with them last Sunday, I think Cahill will detail a runner for Kelly and if that reduces his scoring return by 1/3 that could be enough to win them the game.
But you can be sure of one thing with this team, they will leave it all out on the field, and that is very positive.

The "hassle" he went through was of his own making and fair play to him for doing it, but got the role as early as possible and got the club championship ran the way he wanted so that's a good thing. Of the injuries, Conlon was a massive loss but he was carrying an injury for a while AND his injury was very early in the season, Galvin was very close to championship but you'd imagine as he's still involved in the backroom that the injury was always known about, Duggan was always going to be missing and Podge wasn't featuring anyway, yes all 4 players would add something to the team but we've had a season to prepare to be without 2 of them and 1 of them was probably going to be a sub.

At the start of the year we were ranked either 4th or 5th in Munster, Limerick and Tipp well ahead of us, Cork a little bit ahead and us equal with Waterford, the match at the weekend is to see if we're better than Waterford.

TK is almost unmarkable at the moment, Limerick showed that if you leave him off to do his own thing and concentrate on the rest of the Clare forwards that you'll beat Clare, I wouldn't be surprised if Waterford do something similar. I think we have the hurlers to be 1 of the best teams in the country but because we aren't getting the best out of the players we have for lots of different reason we have to be content to plucky displays every now and again. I don't think we'll beat Waterford but I didn't think we'd beat Wexford so I can't wait to be proven wrong again

Clareman

djr15 wrote: »

In fairness given the personell we are missing this is a very differernt year to anything in the last 10 or so seasons.
Without a definitive plan and asking questions of WF we will be comforably beaten.
The murmerings throughout the country are if you stop TK you stop Clare.
Going on what we have seen you cannot argue with that… which is why I suggest something different is required.
Theres no point accepting they are probably are a stornger team than us and hoping for the best, we have been doing that for long enough.

We've scored 2-71 in 3 games, TK has scored 1-45 of that total, 1-18 from play it's brilliant that we have a player that can do that but it's also scary that we are so reliant on other players, it's not as if the other players are putting a load of shots wide, we just aren't creating chances.

We still don't have a half back or forward line., we struggle in midfield and we also struggle with our puck outs, any game plan we come up with will be designed to try to minimize our problems there

letowski

Clareman wrote: »

The "hassle" he went through was of his own making and fair play to him for doing it, but got the role as early as possible and got the club championship ran the way he wanted so that's a good thing. Of the injuries, Conlon was a massive loss but he was carrying an injury for a while AND his injury was very early in the season, Galvin was very close to championship but you'd imagine as he's still involved in the backroom that the injury was always known about, Duggan was always going to be missing and Podge wasn't featuring anyway, yes all 4 players would add something to the team but we've had a season to prepare to be without 2 of them and 1 of them was probably going to be a sub.

To be fair though Clareman, sure Lohan had sometime to prepare for the loss of Conlon, Duggan and Galvin, but it's hard to substitute for quality in a county that hasn't been producing alot of good players recently. We were desperately short on midfielders are half forwards before Peter decided to go to Australia. There is a possibility in actual fact, if Kelly plays in the roaming corner forward role, that Lohan will pick 5 wing backs from 8-12. I guess all Lohan can do it play the hand he is dealt, but I think he is getting as much out of them as can be expected. I think we need to understand, while we ask ourselves where will the scores come from other than Kelly, but in actual fact if Shanagher is out, Shane O'Donnell is pretty much the only other natural forward in this team (McCarthy, Fitz, Ryan, McInerney converted backs, Taylor, Malone converted midfielders). We also down a good few subs too like Deasy, Podge and Ian Galvin who would be good help, that people forget about too. Resources are very thin on the ground. It was always going to be a big ask to beat a team like a full strength Waterford, but we will battle and still have a decent chance.

Treble double

letowski wrote: »

To be fair though Clareman, sure Lohan had sometime to prepare for the loss of Conlon, Duggan and Galvin, but it's hard to substitute for quality in a county that hasn't been producing alot of good players recently. We were desperately short on midfielders are half forwards before Peter decided to go to Australia. There is a possibility in actual fact, if Kelly plays in the roaming corner forward role, that Lohan will pick 5 wing backs from 8-12. I guess all Lohan can do it play the hand he is dealt, but I think he is getting as much out of them as can be expected. I think we need to understand, while we ask ourselves where will the scores come from other than Kelly, but in actual fact if Shanagher is out, Shane O'Donnell is pretty much the only other natural forward in this team (McCarthy, Fitz, Ryan, McInerney converted backs, Taylor, Malone converted midfielders). We also down a good few subs too like Deasy, Podge and Ian Galvin who would be good help, that people forget about too. Resources are very thin on the ground. It was always going to be a big ask to beat a team like a full strength Waterford, but we will battle and still have a decent chance.

You only have to look at the Club Championship in Clare to see that Lohan is very limited in what he can work with. A functional Bridge team is dominating, the Mills no disrespect to them got to a county final, but what are they going to offer a county team.

BnB

letowski wrote: »

First, the ball going in just isn't on the same level you see Limerick or Tipperary's inside forwards get. That's OK because they have their brand of hurling well refined at this stage. But I think Clare are missing Colm Galvin as he is the best link man in the county. The last time we were maximising the return out of the full forward line was in the summer of 2018, when Conlon and O'Donnell were in red hot form. But it was also not a coincidence that it coincided with Clare having their two best distributors in the field, Colm Galvin and Jamie Shanahan. As an example in the first half of the 2018 Munster final, John Conlon was going to town against Cork but the service he was getting was outstanding.

Nail on the freggin head if you ask me.

The quality of ball going into the Limerick full forward line is simply top class. Across their bodies out into space to run onto. Or...heads up and spotting that Gillane is one on one on the 14 and putting a long one in for him.... Just all good intelligent ball.

I think blaming the corner forward for not scoring when they're not getting good ball in, is like the old Junior B thinking to take off the corner forward when we're not winning the match.

We're not sending in terrible ball, but we could improve a lot. And 100% - 2018 when Conlon & SOD were flying, we were playing close to limerick's current level of distribution. Galvin is a big big loss for sure. I really hope we see him back next year. I think the overall level of play and commitment from players on the field has been raised this year and I think Galvin would fit nicely into that.

dohboy

letowski wrote: »

We also down a good few subs too like Deasy, Podge and Ian Galvin who would be good help, that people forget about too. Resources are very thin on the ground. It was always going to be a big ask to beat a team like a full strength Waterford, but we will battle and still have a decent chance.

Where's Niall Deasy gone? I just assumed he was dropped.

djr15

I think we have the ability to compete around midfield if we battle like we did the last day.
We certainly made it difficult for WX and fought really well in the middle third forcing them into a lot of long range shooting, which at this time of year will not yield as many scores as it would in the summer months.

Some observations:
We must be more disciplined in our tackling especially our forwards, often times as a forward you are as well let the man out with the ball (under pressure) rather than giving away a needless free, potentially a yellow card, and giving the opposition a platform to drop a ball into the square.
Its an easy decision for the ref to give a defender free out for something like a soft high tackle, as there will be no major immediate impact to the scoreboard or no major protest from the side-line.
The ref also gets a breather and it allows the game to re-set – I think these are factors in the amount of soft frees out we see in hurling. Quilligan got 2 himself the last day for little or nothing.

Running with the defender and focusing on hooking can far more effective. Make the opposition go sideways, backwards, but most of all, slow down delivery to their attack no matter who you are playing.
We did this well for the last 3/4s of the WX game, but for the first 15 or 20 mins we gave away a mountain of needless frees. Only when our tackling improved did we grab the game by the neck and drive on.
This improvement coincided with TK going into the full forward line where he scored 3 wonderous points.
Isolating him in advanced positions and getting clean first time ball to him will result in scores or at worst frees won.

While we did battle well in the second half, we presented WX with 2 goal chances, both of which we should have been punished for. Additionally, we have a tendency to get sucked into rucks, we did this last weekend and it lead to WX scoring 4 or 5 soft points from play in the second half with the wind. We cannot repeat this Saturday.
I think Jason McCarthy hurled well and has more to offer than Aidan. Jason scored two good points and is a player who plays with his head up and gives good ball to the forwards – something we need a lot more of.
I would bring in McInerney at the expense of Aidan the next day.
Malone hurled very well, and carried from deep which is becoming more apparent is his key strength. Morey and Pat O Connor also did well under pressure during the game. Rory Hayes is a real tigerish defender and looks comfortable on the ball.

Fortunate: We rode our luck with the 2 goal chances WX didn’t take, but also, our goal came just as Chin was being introduced…. It completely killed the boost of him coming on was likely to bring.
Lots of areas for improvement, but some positives also.

Void Ceremony

BnB wrote: »

Nail on the freggin head if you ask me.

The quality of ball going into the Limerick full forward line is simply top class. Across their bodies out into space to run onto. Or...heads up and spotting that Gillane is one on one on the 14 and putting a long one in for him.... Just all good intelligent ball.

I think blaming the corner forward for not scoring when they're not getting good ball in, is like the old Junior B thinking to take off the corner forward when we're not winning the match.

We're not sending in terrible ball, but we could improve a lot. And 100% - 2018 when Conlon & SOD were flying, we were playing close to limerick's current level of distribution. Galvin is a big big loss for sure. I really hope we see him back next year. I think the overall level of play and commitment from players on the field has been raised this year and I think Galvin would fit nicely into that.

Except he couldn't commit and get his sh1t together.

Clareman

1 thing I'd like to point out is that the level of commitment from these players has never been in question, it has been 10 years since a lot of these lads appeared in the minor All Ireland final and a lot of them haven't had a break from hurling, they have to be commended on their dedication to the cause, this has been for every year in my opinion and I don't think any year has been more or less as they have always done what was asked of them, some managers may ask of more from them but they never waiver.

The level of play in 2018 was probably been the highest level they have reached over an entire season but its not fair to compare this year to other years as they are playing winter hurling.

letowski

dohboy wrote: »

Where's Niall Deasy gone? I just assumed he was dropped.

He didn’t make himself available for selection this winter unfortunately.

dohboy

letowski wrote: »

He didn’t make himself available for selection this winter unfortunately.

Woulda thought he might get more of a look in with Duggan gone, but he didn't seem to in the league afaik, so I'm assuming he felt he wasn't fancied...?

letowski

dohboy wrote: »

Woulda thought he might get more of a look in with Duggan gone, but he didn't seem to in the league afaik, so I'm assuming he felt he wasn't fancied...?

Yeah he wasn’t featuring all that much in the league so it’s possible.

keeponhurling

We also need to make subs quicker the next day.
We’ve tended to struggle in the last few minutes, if the game is close you’d hope we can find the energy to close out a win.

It could be a draw or go to extra time, stranger things have happened

Clareman

keeponhurling wrote: »

We also need to make subs quicker the next day.
We’ve tended to struggle in the last few minutes, if the game is close you’d hope we can find the energy to close out a win.

It could be a draw or go to extra time, stranger things have happened

Absolutely, we are yet to use all 5 subs in a game and we have a habit of brining on our fourth sub in injury time, I'd be looking to have all 5 subs used by the 60th minute, maybe the 65th if there's been a lot of breaks.

Feenie

Tony Kelly in my view would probably be marked by Connor Prunty, looking at his work on Aaron Gillane I'd imagine he's fancied to mark other teams dangerous players.
In my opinion let them focus down Kelly, which will probably exhaust them in the backs, even then he'll probably pluck off his points. Start Malone, O'Donnell and Taylor up in the full forward line, keep taylor and O'Donnell close to goal. Drift Malone out and let him pick off his points, try and increase and O'Donnell and Taylor's goal scoring threat- I.e the last day taylor was inches away from goals and put up quite a few in the league. Both him and O'Donnell would have put a good bit between us and Laois if it wasn't for the brilliance of their keeper.
alternatively start Kelly up full forward, drag him out, which would probably get the attention of Waterford's defense and that would let Taylor/O'Donnell in space.
Just spit balling to be honest.

Clareman

I really can't see them putting something like Prunty on Kelly because Kelly will go from centre back to corner forward for different parts of the game, Prunty won't be able to cope with the constant running and following of TK, even things like covering him while he takes frees will be difficult. I'd imagine they'll do an exchange job where players are either told to mark him for a certain amount of minutes or they'll do a zone coverage with communications between players, almost like handing off the coverage in american football, lot faster game I know.

We really need another player to step up, as our freetaker as well as our roaming player TK will have to account for at least 10 points, we need the others to come up with nearly 20 and ANY goal chances will have to be taken, chances like the one missed by Guilfoyle and the 1 made by Taylor last week will have to be stuck if we're to have any chance.

Clareman

Looking at the game, I think we still have a massive problem from 5 to 12 and with our puck outs but after 15 minutes of the game against Wexford we started to crowd the right areas of the pitch so even though we weren't winning the puck out at least we were contesting them. The weather is going to have a massive impact on every game from now on, if we win the toss we'll have to build as big a lead as possible, last weekend it didn't look like 10 points would be enough, against the wind we'll have to slow the game down as much as possible and score when we can and not take stupid shots.

Waterford haven't set the world alight this year, if it was a normal year you'd have expected us to beat them at home in the Munster round robin but this isn't a normal year. If we are to win we'll need to have TK put in another massive performance but also have a few more chip in with scores, easier said than done I know.

Billy Ocean

I reckon Lyons will mark Kelly and Moran if not

Feenie

Clareman wrote: »

Looking at the game, I think we still have a massive problem from 5 to 12 and with our puck outs but after 15 minutes of the game against Wexford we started to crowd the right areas of the pitch so even though we weren't winning the puck out at least we were contesting them. The weather is going to have a massive impact on every game from now on, if we win the toss we'll have to build as big a lead as possible, last weekend it didn't look like 10 points would be enough, against the wind we'll have to slow the game down as much as possible and score when we can and not take stupid shots.

Waterford haven't set the world alight this year, if it was a normal year you'd have expected us to beat them at home in the Munster round robin but this isn't a normal year. If we are to win we'll need to have TK put in another massive performance but also have a few more chip in with scores, easier said than done I know.

Kelly probably will, I mean if we win this we're into the semis. that's a huge achievement and maybe we'll have our respect back in the hurling world. I could see davy mc picking off a few scorers, O'Donnell might finally get his name on the score sheet and I think ryan taylor will be in for a good few. Hopefully Shanagher will be in and he'll be able to pick off his scores aswell.

Clareman

This stage is the absolute base level we should be expecting, to be knocked out before this would be considered a poor season but getting past it is considered a good season, in the past decade the only 2 seasons that we would consider successful would be 2013 & 2018, considering we won the league and got to another Munster final it puts it all into perspective. As I said before, we've beaten Waterford for the past 2 seasons so we should expect to beat them again but they are a team on the way up and we are a team on the way down.

Feenie

Clareman wrote: »

This stage is the absolute base level we should be expecting, to be knocked out before this would be considered a poor season but getting past it is considered a good season, in the past decade the only 2 seasons that we would consider successful would be 2013 & 2018, considering we won the league and got to another Munster final it puts it all into perspective. As I said before, we've beaten Waterford for the past 2 seasons so we should expect to beat them again but they are a team on the way up and we are a team on the way down.

A team on the way down? in the past 3 seasons
a semi final appearance and we were nearly munster champions
a terrible season
an improving season where we're now in the race to the semis and if we get there, we could be serious contenders.
by definition we're on the way up, there's no comparing the form of 2019 to 2020.

Clareman

Feenie wrote: »

A team on the way down? in the past 3 seasons
a semi final appearance and we were nearly munster champions
a terrible season
an improving season where we're now in the race to the semis and if we get there, we could be serious contenders.
by definition we're on the way up, there's no comparing the form of 2019 to 2020.

We're on the way up so, woohoo