Joe will you head to Hayes hotel for some grub Sunday? A pint in the county bar perhaps?emphasized text
I never drink
Joe is an orange man… Fanta all the way.
Clare should win this sucker
It still hurts I know I know
I fear for Limerick on Sunday.
Leaving a proven top class championship lynchpin like Gavin O’Mahony out would be madness. There’s picking based on form and there’s snubbing a guaranteed performer.
As @Big_Dan_Campbell said, they didn’t have any continuity in the league either. I don’t think it’s worthwhile experimentation when there’s wholesale changes from game to game and with young / new / untested players not having the benefit of coming into an otherwise relatively settled team.
I also didn’t notice the manager imposing any discernible structure or tactical plan but it could be a bit of chicken and egg - cohesive combination play is difficult when there’s a lack of continuity or consistency to the team selection.
Keep your Wexford thoughts to yourself lad.
How fucking dare you speak to TFKs foremost Hurling analyst like that, you cheeky little fucker you.
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When was the last time Shane O’Donnell scored more than point from play against a decent team? Relegation play-off in 2015? Don’t get me wrong, he works hard and does win frees but there are a couple of our forwards I’d take over him.
Similarly, Shanagher potentially could destroy Richie, he’s very good in the air and quick. But he can also only hit the ball off one side and his touch isn’t that great.
If we push up on the puckouts, they will be relying on Conlon to win ball and while he has always caused us problems, his form hasn’t been great this year. Fahy does have a very good puckout admittedly and can pick players out on the run but we should be well aware of that. Tracking the runners is a must at all times.
Of their forwards, McGrath is the real big threat. He could torture us if they can isolate him inside. I’m not sure who we’ll detail to mark him.
Obviously the movement of Collins & Kelly is huge too, and they will knock over points from out the field but we will just have to work like demons to limit their influence as much as possible.
It looks like they’ll be very light in the middle third, it’s something we can use to our advantage, we really have to stop them running at us in space.
Down the other end, neither Morey or Dillon are great man markers. Both good hurlers but neither have the stickiness of O’Brien who can nullify a man completely. Get Lynch running at Cleary too, very slow on the turn.
It’s only fucking Clare. We will win.
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I’ll speak to any one here as I see fit now shut your mouth you cheeky little cunt of a young fella!
See, you tried too hard there with the retort. You’re an amateur mate. You’ve got so much to learn but I get the impression from your posts that you don’t have a whole pile of intelligence to be up to that job.
Would you start Mulcahy? He’d be the first name on my teamsheet.
What in Goals???
I’m dyslexic.
Hard to judge the Clare forwards on their performances over the last few years. Tony Kelly playing as an auxiliary centre back half the time and Conor McGrath 70 yards from goals. Two forwards facing four backs the majority of the time. Hard to know what they’ll produce but they’ve had no real chance to perform at all in the last two years.
Btw O’Donnell got 3 points from play against Limerick last year, if Limerick could be considered a ‘decent team’.
I do realise all that, and I’m not doubting Kelly or McGrath, they are class. But I work with a lot of Clare people and I’m just not sure where they’re supreme confidence that they are so much better than Limerick comes from. I think they underrate us quite a bit.
No harm I suppose. With regard to SOD, we were horrific last year but I actually didn’t realise that. Fair enough.
It’s coming from Limerick’s only televised game of the year being that shambolic performance against Galway. Noticeable shift in opinion after that game. Challenge games have also gone well for Clare, but then so have Limerick’s but no one seems to be talking about that.
I see the overconfidence as well. Feeling seems to be that with a more conventional structure the forwards we have will out-point Limerick. Even though people wouldn’t necessarily think it, implicit in a lot of what’s being said is that Moloney and O’Connor can flick a switch and get championship winning performances out of a team that hasn’t produced them for years. A certain amount of that is based on the belief that the team’s conditioning work was horrendously mismanaged by Fitzgerald and that the team was overtrained and lethargic in their hurling for the championship. For a light team that is naturally about fast and skillful hurling this is seen as a fairly disastrous strategy.
I think this is a reasonable point of view myself. But I don’t know how much of the damage can be undone in just six months, or how much improvement could have been made. We will be fresher, we’ll play a more positive game, and I think our hurling should be better. All of that will make a difference but how big a difference remains to be seen. On one level there seems to be an assumption that Clare will be a much improved team on what we saw in the league, but that Limerick won’t be. Similarly there’s a view that Clare simply have better hurlers man to man, but of our entire defence I would say that only McInerney and potentially Fitzgerald are special talents at IC level.
I think there’s too much we don’t know about both teams heading into it to call it confidently either way. I think both sides have idealised versions in their heads of how it will turn out. But performances have been so far from ideal in recent times that both of those versions seem far-fetched from this vantage point. The truth will most likely be somewhere in the middle and for a derby game like this that means all bets are off.
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I always feel sorry for O’Donnell when I see him hurling for ye. Bursts his bollox to make the best of ball into him but always outnumbered with no support. If he was properly supported I think he could be a great player.