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INTERMEDIATE HURLING

Clara 0-9 Shamrocks 3-10

3rd April 2009

Clara Intermediate hurlers played Shamrocks last night in Mucklagh, although we were well beaten by 10 points, I won’t panic just yet.

It was a lovely evening for a match the sun shining brightly, the  grass was a bit long and heavy under foot but all in all not too bad. I played league match’s in a lot worse conditions, I even remember playing a county final against Ferbane in the early 90s in the snow. 

So that leaves the question why were we beaten by so much. Well firstly, we had a lot of new faces to the team last night, lads who didn’t play with one another before and lads who might have been a little bit nervous.

We had lads we hadn’t seen with a hurl in their hands in a while, which was good to see back, we had the lads who weren’t in the field for training as often as they could also.

This was very evident with Clara’s first touch, on more than one occasion last night we failed to control the ball and either gave away possession or gave Shamrocks time to surround us and put us under pressure.

We don’t seem to have the confidence on the ball that is required, a lot of the time when we get the ball in our hand we panic, we don’t know what to do, we seem to take the wrong choice a lot of the time, then in the next passage of play we could put a move together that you would see on All-Ireland final day in Croke Park, so I guess we're not consistent enough either. 

I don’t want to sound too negative, there was good effort from a lot through out the match. Ivan Melia was solid at centre back, Edna Stones and Lorcan Hiney worked hard in the middle of the field, Sean Nolan fielded some lovely ball in and around the square, and there were plenty more around the field putting in a good effort.

But as I said earlier we were just taking the wrong option or not getting the ball in hand first time.

So with 5 weeks to go to our first round match we still have a lot of work to do. Ollie Minnock is on board with Banjo and David Gavin and Pat Lowry and he will bring a wealth of experience to the outfit.

So its just a matter of getting to the field, doing what’s asked of you while your there, and we’ll all push forward to bring Clara hurling back to senior status.

Best of luck lads.

Danny McCormack, Brian Minnock,Jonathan O'Brien, Wesley Coyne,Patsy Fleming ,Ivan melia, Oliver Creagh,Lorcan Hiney, Enda Stones, Alan Cronin, Sean Nolan, Shane Grennan, Ger Rabbitte,  Colm Scanlon, John Paul Meehan.

Subs: Kieran O'Keeffe, Alan O'Meara, Pa Smith, Enda Dunne, Steven Hyland, Marius Stones 

Contributed by: Derek Handy 4th April 2009