*Éire Óg’s Jarlath Collins. Photograph: Mike Brennan
STRENGTH in depth has been a tag attributed to Éire Óg’s footballers all season but it was clear to see on Sunday as they survived a big scare from Adare to seal their place in a second Munster club semi-final in four seasons.
Injury ruled out Clare defenders Ronan Lanigan and Éinne O’Connor, man of the match in their Clare SFC final win over Kilmurry Ibrickane, Colm Walsh O’Loghlen was down under in Australia and wing forward Niall McMahon was also omitted from the first fifteen due to injury.
In their place came ex Clare back Dean Ryan, three time Clare SFC winners Jarlath Collins and Philip Talty along with current Clare player Gavin Murray.
Éire Óg manager Paul Madden said neither Lanigan or O’Connor were one hundred percent fit for the quarter-final “and you can’t play a game like this if you are not one hundred percent fit”. He added, “we’ve said it all year and people have been talking about our squad, we are not afraid to use it. I thought the lads who came in, Philip Talty worked hard, Jarlath Collins worked very hard particularly in the second half and Dean Ryan plus the lads who came off the bench, overall it is a squad game, it is not about fifteen, it is about everybody”.
Losing goalkeeper Shane Daniels to injury on the thirty eighth minute was an unexpected substitution, he admitted. “You have to be ready for the fact that it might happen and Peadar (O’Keeffe) did very well when he came in, again you have to trust your squad, ideally you don’t want to be losing your goalkeeper but if you lose him then you have to bring your sub goalkeeper in and he did a good job”.
On the extent of the injuries and whether players may return for the home semi-final versus Loughmore-Castleiney, he said, “We’ll see, we’ll go back to the drawing board, recover well and see where we are, we know we will need everybody and that we will have to put in a better performance to get over the line”.
A sluggish first half saw Éire Óg trail 0-4 0-2 as they found themselves dealing with an Adare site keen to hunt in packs and limit the Ennis side’s ability to emerge out of defence in possession.
Madden told The Clare Echo, “It was always going to be tricky because they are county champions, they are a decent outfit, they play a good style of football. We were very disappointed with our first half, we really didn’t turn up at all, we didn’t win any fifty fifty battles, we got a little over wrapped up in ourselves, on the line tactically and everything we got it all wrong in the first half and we just said we needed to go back to our absolute basics in the second half and we needed to outwork them because they brought an intensity in the first half and we were second best even though we had chances. The focus for the second half was to win the fifty fifty battles, drive on from there and we did”.
At the core of where it went wrong in the opening half was Éire Óg didn’t work as hard as Adare, according to Madden. “They are an exceptional bunch of players and they know themselves when they are not playing well they don’t need to be reminded, although we had a few gentle reminders from inside the group, however once they got going to be fair the goal was a great tonic for us, it came at a great time and from thereon we were comfortable-ish”.
There was a flatness to their first half, he said. “If anyone would have a hangover it would be Adare because they had a county final last Sunday, I’m not sure about that, we were just flat in the first half, you have to credit Adare with a lot of that, they pressed hard and they moved us all over the pitch, we didn’t adapt to it but the second half was much better”.
How new leaders emerged to get them over the line was very pleasing for the three-time Clare SFC winning manager. “Lads that aren’t normally associated with leadership were leading today in the second half like Oran Cahill, Dean Ryan coming in doing well at the back, Ja Collins worked extremely hard and that is the sum of all parts, you don’t need the oldest wisest guy to be the leader all the time”.
