*Patrick Crotty impressed when introduced for Clare. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
CLARE cannot be expecting to win games while racking up high wide counts, senior hurling manager Brian Lohan conceded while admitting a heavy burden has been placed on their younger players.
A three point loss to Wexford marked a second defeat in as many weekends for Clare’s senior hurlers. It is also a successive season where the Model County have travelled to Ennis in the National Hurling League and emerged victorious with Clare gaining the upperhand in both of Lohan’s championship clashes with the then Davy Fitzgerald managed side.
“We have to take a couple of positives from the performance even though we lost the game,” the two-time All-Ireland winner said of Sunday’s 2-20 1-20 defeat.
Shooting eleven wides in the opening half was flagged by the Shannon native as a pivotal factor for the result. “We had eleven wides in the first half, you can’t afford that especially against this opposition, it looks bad when you’re hitting so many wides but we had three of those that were frees, we put responsibility on Mark and again he shouldn’t have to take that responsibility but that’s just the way it is”.
Mixed performances were visible throughout the Clare team, he felt. “Rory Hayes won’t be happy with his first half performance, he had 1-04 scored off him and three frees conceded, it’s an awful lot to be conceded for a corner back so he won’t be happy with that, overall the backs did well”.
Paddy Donnellan with 0-03 from play, Patrick Crotty scoring 0-02 when introduced at half-time while fielding several high balls, Shane Meehan’s first goal in the NHL and Mark Rodgers finishing as Clare’s top scorer were among the positives for Banner supporters to take from a disappointing second round showing.
Speaking after the loss, Lohan outlined that the injuries to more established players is adding to the burden towed by the younger panellists. “We’re asking an awful lot of those guys, they are young lads and were putting them under pressure, they shouldn’t have to be but it’s just the way injuries went against us for the last while. We shouldn’t be asking Shane to do seventy minutes against the strength of those guys but we are, he’s able to compete”.
He added, “We created chances and in fairness to Shane he usually takes them but we didn’t, that happens sometimes. It was a great save. You would have to be happy with the workrate and responsibilities the inside line took, John Conlon showed endeavour for his first day back”.
Despite back to back defeats, Brian believed that the nine point loss to Cork last weekend was not as bad as suggested. “Last week we conceded 1-10 to no score in the ten minutes before half-time, I was happy after twenty three minutes with the performance I thought we had done well, after thirty one or thirty two minutes it was 1-12 1-09 so we would have been happy with it but it just looked so bad then when we conceded that full 1-19 in the first half, it looked worse than it actually was”.
