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*A dejected Conner Hegarty. Photograph: Ruth Griffin
EXPERIENCE gained from coming up short in the Clare SHC semi-finals following penalties “will be hopefully be invaluable” to Inagh/Kilnamona’s young guns.
Inagh/Kilnamona became the first senior hurling team in Clare to exit the championship via a penalty shootout when they lost 4-3 to Sixmilebridge in the semi-finals. In what is a good omen for The Bridge, Cratloe beat a fancied Éire Óg on penalties before winning last year’s football decider.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Inamona manager Tomás Kelly admitted the manner of their defeat was cruel. “It is hard to take. We all knew the rules beforehand so we’re not complaining about the penalties or anything like that. Once you get to penalties, you’re at the mercy of a lottery really whereas we felt that we had chances to win the game in real time and extra-time so we can’t have any complaints and we just have to get on with it now, learn from it and move forward”.
Reflecting on the game, the Clare U20 selector outlined, “All the good teams will hit back at you if you don’t put them away so there are real learnings in that for us. When you are on top and you have your purple patch, you need to make the scores count on the board and look, it just didn’t happen for us, we weren’t able to shake them off and the longer they stayed in the game, the happier they were, so we need to learn that when you are in top, you need to make your dominance count so we’re most disappointed about that aspect of it.
“On the other side of it, it looked to be gone from us at the end of normal time and we showed huge character to go back down the field and get the equaliser. And in extra-time we went three down with four minutes to go and we didn’t reach for the panic button and push for goals, they stuck to the process and reeled the ‘Bridge back in with points and even had a chance to even win it. So look, you’d be massively proud of them that they stayed in the fight and kept plugging away, even though the tide was turning against us”.
Among the new players to make their bow in this year’s championship for the club were Conor Rynne, James Hegarty and Fred Hegarty, a trio that also collected All-Ireland and Munster minor medals in 2023. “We’ve a lot of young players, many in their first year at adult level and they have an unbelievable ability to learn and constantly soak up new information so this experience will hopefully be invaluable to them and I’ve no doubt that all the lads can learn from this,” Kelly concluded.
