Cork are going to walk this.
Lets be honest Klare should walk this if they are going well. But there is enough evidence from the league playoff/Waterford game to suggest that Davy will make a complete balls out of this and Cork might just fall over the line
Maybe.
The Cork 15 is not at all that bad imo. O’Neill, Egan & Joyce will hold their own at the back. Up front Lehane, McCarthy, Horgan & O’Farrell will give Clare plenty to think about. Midfield could be the problem for Cork alright. On the bench they have options in Naughton, Coughlan & Cronin. As stated by many after Limerick overturned Tipperary recently, League form counts for fuck all when Championship comes around.
Cork for me.
The Clare lads are very quiet, Davy must have warned them about staying off the internet again.
[quote=“carryharry, post: 789809, member: 1517”]Maybe.
The Cork 15 is not at all that bad imo. O’Neill, Egan & Joyce will hold their own at the back. Up front Lehane, McCarthy, Horgan & O’Farrell will give Clare plenty to think about. Midfield could be the problem for Cork alright. On the bench they have options in Naughton, Coughlan & Cronin. As stated by many after Limerick overturned Tipperary recently, League form counts for fuck all when Championship comes around.
Cork for me.[/quote]
Interesting. Haven’t seen anyone else tipping cork. Think Clare will win but they’re not as good yet as some Clare lads seem to think.
If i’ve nothing on I might Tipp and watch this Sunday. I’ve seen fuck all of Cork this year but there’s not much in that team that will bother Clare. In saying that, the two games i’ve seen Clare this year, they’ve been average enough and were lucky not to be down more at half time against an average Waterford side. They’ll work for the 70 but there’s no way Cork will be as aimless and wasteful as Waterford were in that second half, these Cork coonts are clever aul hoors don’t ya know.
I’ll go Cork by 2.
Looked good in bits and pieces for UCC, but was poor against Galway. Fairly big but not a reliable ball-winner. Tries hard but another one of these lads that isn’t used to using his body or tackling properly. Looks lively when he has the ball but his shooting and decision making is erratic. Very much a mixed bag at this level.
[quote=“ChocolateMice, post: 789815, member: 168”]
I’ll go Cork by 2.[/quote]
CM knows an ambush in the making when he sees one. 
Cork i think. If cronin can play at all its a banker. Nothing between the teams yet clare think they’re a lot stronger for some unknown reason.
What are tickets sales like so far for this? Might go for a look weather permitting.
I’m well removed from the Cork hurling scene, club and county, but I think this is the first time in my life a fella will play championship hurling that I have never so much as heard of.
Did you not even watch UCC play on TG4 over the past few years Dan.
You’ll get a ticket easy, hardly anyone from Cork going. There’ll be 20k max, if the GAA is lucky.
Any word on the Clare team? chewy louie
Good preview by Enda McEvoy
[SIZE=4][FONT=Lucida Bright][SIZE=18px] [/SIZE][/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=4][FONT=Lucida Bright][SIZE=18px]Maturing Clare learning how to get the job done[/SIZE][/FONT][/SIZE]
[FONT=Tahoma][SIZE=12px]Saturday, June 22, 2013[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma][SIZE=12px]MUNSTER SHC SEMI-FINAL:
Clare v Cork
Want to try making a case for Cork tomorrow, their injury woes notwithstanding?[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma][SIZE=12px][U][FONT=inherit][FONT=inherit]http://media.tcm.ie/media/images/e/Exam22062013GAA2_large.jpg[/FONT][/FONT][/U]
[FONT=inherit][SIZE=10px]Clare’s David McInerney is surrounded by Cork forwards Stephen Moylan, left, Luke O’Farrell and Patrick Horgan during the Div 1A relegation play-off at the Gaelic Grounds. Picture: Sportsfile[/SIZE][/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Tahoma][SIZE=12px][FONT=inherit]ANALYSIS: Enda McEvoy[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]Piece of cáca milis. Have a look at the video of the first threequarters of Clare versus Waterford at Semple Stadium and you’ll be away in a hack. Presented with such evidence, there isn’t a jury in the land that wouldn’t be entitled to harbour a reasonable doubt as to the chances of Davy Fitz’s lads getting the job done at the Gaelic Grounds. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]Pronounced and self-defeating fussiness with sideline cuts. A goal and at least two points coughed up by opting for a short ball where a long ball would have sufficed. The sum total of 0-5 scored between the seventh minute and the 43rd minute — an entire half of a match. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]Yet here’s the thing. Clare not only committed all those sins and won, they committed them and sauntered home by eight points. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]True, they were entitled to beat that particular Waterford XV three weeks ago. They were even entitled, if everything went right on the day, to beat them well. Everything didn’t go right on the day, far from it, but they hit 2-6 in the closing quarter and won pulling away nonetheless. In the process they achieved a feat that, for all their myriad virtues, was permanently beyond Ger Loughnane’s edition of the saffron and blue. They won playing badly. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]It was the day the new Clare became a championship team, a kind of Year Zero in Davy Fitz’s second season in charge. Tomorrow marks another potential milepost on their nascent journey. Victory and they’ll not merely have reached the provincial final, they’ll also have won two successive Munster championship matches for only the second time this century. In a way the latter would constitute a more significant achievement than the former. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]And another thing. Much of what the Banner did badly on June 2 can be corrected. These were problems with the facade of the building, not the foundations. Will Pat Donnellan, for instance, ever give away another goal by attempting a 10-metre pass from the heart of his own defence when — because not every ball needs to be made a percentage ball, not even with this Clare team — he can drive it half the length of the field instead? No. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]Will they give away a simple, annoying point to one of the Cork half-forwards by going short from a midfield sideline cut? Presumably not, although a rethink of their line ball strategy is in order. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]To wit: why flick the sliotar five yards sideways to a marked colleague, thereby risking a turnover within point-concession distance, when you can make the enemy defence turn and sprint by flaying it 40 yards on the diagonal to a forward who’s out to it a step in front of his marker? The presence of a chap as big as Darach Honan, who presumably barely missed out on being cast as one or other of the two towers in the second Lord of the Rings film, is only of benefit when he’s in full and gainful employment, not lounging around waiting for work to come his way. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]Davy isn’t going to rethink his grand plan, of course. That’s a given. He’s invested too much time, thought and faith in it. So, even though the current margin for error is too wide, Clare readers tempted to howl in anguish when passes go astray tomorrow shouldn’t bother. There will be no doctrinal shift. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]What’s required now is time and flexibility. Time to allow the players to grow with the system and fully come to terms with it. Flexibility on the part of the manager to allow them tweak it as they go. To learn when to play the short, manicured ball to a colleague. To learn when to forget about putting a message on the sliotar and to just lorry it down the field instead and let what happens happen. When to hold, when to fold. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]We mentioned one difference with the Loughnane team a few paragraphs ago. Here’s another. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]John Conlon and Tony Kelly hit three points apiece against Waterford. Smooth, stylish points from a variety of angles and distances. The pair of them will do that most days. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]Clare weren’t blessed with a brace of scoring half-forwards in the age of Loughnane, even at its high-water mark. Granted, Jamesie did it most afternoons and one of the other forwards — Fergie Tuohy in the 1995 All-Ireland final, to take the most obvious example — would strike a good day every so often. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]But the task of racking up enough points for victory was always a permanent and painful drama, a ceaseless struggle between the forwards and their scoring limitations. With the new Clare generation, racking up enough points for victory won’t be. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]All of that said, Cork are nicely positioned. If only because Clare are not, what with their opponents’ injuries and the excitement silently bubbling in the Banner about a prospective Munster final date with the neighbours. Emerging teams in Clare’s place right now constantly lose matches they’re supposed to win. It comes with the territory. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]Still, a Cork panel that needed to be supplemented over the winter and spring has instead been shorn. Then there are the problems with their own puckout, as evidenced last year in the league and All-Ireland semi-finals, and the ongoing necessity to up their goalscoring rate — an imperative here because they’re scarcely going to outpoint Clare. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]What’s more, and this is a bizarre observation to make of a Cork side, the men in red lack a unique selling point at the moment. Who are they? What are they about? What is, for want of a better phrase, their corporate identity? Other counties have their USPs. Kilkenny’s is power, focus and iron resolve. Tipperary’s on their good days is about a whirl of attacking movement. Clare’s is pace and possession retention. Galway’s is Joe Canning. Cork’s? For sure they’ll be neat and tidy and easy on the eye tomorrow. Being Cork, they may well be something more than that by September. As of now, however, they’re not. [/FONT][/SIZE]
[SIZE=12px][FONT=Tahoma]It is set up for Clare to falter. Here’s someone who believes they won’t.[/FONT][/SIZE]
Was supposed to be named last night but was delayed. Will be pretty much the same as the last day it seems with Morey possibly dropping out and being replaced by Nickey O’Connell
The kid is fierce quiet this week.
Keeping quiet in the hope that clare win giving him a chance to win back his paulm username from SS*
why are Clare making themselves such overwhelming favourites for this game can anyone tell me?
ok, im aware they have beaten us in 2 pretty meaningless games so far this year, we are not great and thats a pretty weak team we have out but i still cant see anything in the Clare team that is jumping out at me ( or from the performance vs waterford that was a terrible substandard game) that can justify the overwhelming favourtism that will shoulder going into this game.