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*Daragh Sexton. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
KILMURRY IBRICKANE are far from dead after their defeat in the first round of the Clare SFC and they’ll be hoping to spring their championship bid to life when they meet Lissycasey on Saturday evening.
Two points separated Kilmurry Ibrickane from Éire Óg in the opening round of the Clare SFC on a day when the Bricks delivered what would be considered within their neck of the woods to be a below par performance.
Facing off with Lissycasey in Cusack Park on Saturday evening gives them the chance to get points on the board. “You want to see how we bounce back after this. I know Lissycasey have a lot of good young lads coming through, it will be a massive test for us, if we could stand up to them and get over all of a sudden then the pathway looks completely different which is the beauty of championship football, you are never out of it until you are out of it. I like the set up of the Clare championship, it keeps everyone moving, after a first round loss you’re not dead like,” Kilmurry Ibrickane manager David Egan pointed out.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Egan said the showing against Éire Óg was not the result or performance they wanted. “We went out with a fairly positive attitude to go out at things today but it was a very cagey affair, a typical first round game, a lot of sussing each other out rather than going for the cherry. I thought we were a little bit slow, I thought we were playing reasonably well in Cusack Cup games where we were moving the ball a little bit faster”.
Egan who relocated to Ennis in recent months was full of praise for Éire Óg. “Fair play to Éire Óg, they slowed us down in the pockets, they were down three inter-county players and still managed to get a first round win which is testament to them, that group are together eight or nine years with their management and maybe that was the difference in the end, we’re still getting to know our lads but they had the guile and cuteness to get across the line”.
Despite going two points ahead early on, Kilmurry Ibrickane conceded four points in a row and never regained the lead for the remainder of the tie. “You never really see these things, the way the game has gone teams have their purple patches, they do hit you with a three or four point margin, Éire Óg did that, we went out then when we got our bit of a purple patch afterwards but it was too late because Éire Óg got three or four on us at this stage but we got it back to three points at half time and we got it to one at one stage but they brought number nineteen (Luke Pyne) who had great pace, he was able to burst through the middle to help them to win it in the end, two minutes before that we hit the post and the ball ricocheted away, fair play to a good Éire Óg defence which made us rush the ball and Joe Campbell if he had a bit more composure might have fisted the ball over the bar and we could have got a draw out of it”.
Central to the result was how Éire Óg through Ikem Igwueru and Ronan Lanigan nullified Kilmurry Ibrickane’s twin threats of Dermot Coughlan and Keelan Sexton. “They sacrificed Ikem (Ugwueru) to go back and mark Dermot Coughlan which was a big move, he sacrificed his own game which is a good sign of a team if a lad is willing to do that for his team and sacrifice his own game for the team”.
