Clare GAA Discussion - 2024 All Ireland Hurling Champions

i have nearly another 25 years to go to catch up with Nicholas😉

yeah its great to have them in fairness

Ben Cunningham looks the real deal in fairness, that's a big physical cork team too something they have been missing over the last few years

Himself and Ben o Connor and midfielder O'Connell are serious players to be bringing through to senior at the same time

It wasn't Niall that got sent off but he apparently lit the fire 🔥 at half time by asking Fitzgerald " have ye any American dollars in there" when passing the Waterford dressing room

I think it was a club mate of lohan that got sent off , he himself has been a very vocal figure for a number of years against the board and the Fitzgerald family, I won't mention his name as I could be wrong

But I doubt it he was saying his prayers either if he got sent off

disappointing day for the footballers , started off brightly but faded badly in the last 15 minutes

one major question i would have to ask is why the hell was a team out on the field for a full half hour before throw in going all out on drills , donegal didnt take to the field until 12 minutes before throw in and the difference at the end of the game was stark we were flat and leggy with 15 minutes remaining donegal pounced and out scored us 0-7 to 0-2 in that period

we also got a little lesson in defending , donegal set up the same as us , but everyone seems to know what to do , they kept keelan sexton scoreless for 69 minutes , sexton got the opener and no more after that , cleary was held to two frees , and nothing from play ,

a hugh mcfaddin point in the second half summed up the diffrence between the two sides , he had 6 clare players in his vicinity and still kicked a score from 25 yards out

i questioned oisin gallan in the league his second half performance today was top class , as was ciaran thompson who kicked 4 points as well but some excellent ones from range

pearse , darragh bohannon , and jamie malone driving forward were probably our best performers ,

Clare 2-22 Cork 3-18

Brian lohan used his " get out of jail card " in the park today , an exciting game no doubt but errors all over the place , we started slow and allowed corks running game to dictate things for the first 20 minutes , after that we got to grips with things mainly down to a series of excellent kelly scores

1- 4 he had on the board at half time , he only managed one more score in the second half from the well taken penalty , but very little of our inside line stood up after that to step in , a crazy decision by lohan to bring on ian galvin ahead of meehan or shannager resulted in complete breakdown in the attack ,

popular as galvin is , his form has been off for ages and we haven't seen the best of him since the group stage of the munster championship last year he struggled and gave away a few soft frees and was taken off again , but it wasnt just him not firing , we had 12 missed chances today between wides and balls dropped short from play by 9 different players , the biggest culprit was shane o donnell with 3 from play , tony had 4 wides 2 from play and mccarthy had 3 wides 1 from play , this is the area we need to improve on the most espically from our top players likes of McCarthy , Kelly and O'Donnell

contrast to tipperary against limerick 9 wides or balls dropped short and only 6 from play from 5 different players , thats the area we really need to improve on going into the munster final , we lost the all ireland semi last year for wayward shooting and poor inside forward play it will only be the same outcome against tipperary (i imagine) in 3 weeks time if we repeated that form

building up a 9 point lead and not kicking on is a slight worry but cork were always going to fight on ,

apart from maybe the first 15 minutes and maybe how we reacted to the penalty rebound our defensive structure was sound , john conlon was probably man of the match in my opinion with adam hogan or rory hayes , cathal molone was excellent once again in the middle 3rd wining endless amounts of dirty ball

0-4 from play from ryan for a wing back looks good , and he was excellent at times but he did have a few hairy moments , we can forgive him tonight for the efforts he put in in driving the team forward in the second half especially when our inside attack stalled completely

if its tipperary it should be on in limerick , i think there is only something like 1 or 2000 difference in the capacity , corks stadium is excellent but in a terrible location plus its much further away for the bulk of the two teams support