Clare young guns hope to fire one more bullet against Down
Brian McNamara is one of a number of young players to have impressed this year for a new-look Clare football team.
By John Harrington
Clare manager, Mark Fitzgerald, says his team will have to produce their best performance yet of their Allianz Football League Division 3 campaign if they’re to beat Down in Páirc Esler on Sunday and secure promotion to Division 2 for 2025.
“We’re going up there as underdogs,” says Fitzgerald yesterday at the launch of the Munster SFC.
“Down have a very good record in Newry. We literally have gone through the season game to game and we’ve had to because I could have come in and made grand plans and grand statements, but sure it wouldn’t have meant feck all so it was literally game to game and that’s the way we’ve taken it.
“It’s about Down now and seeing can we get a performance that will hopefully look after it. But I think we probably need to play way better than what we’ve been playing over a consistent period of 70-plus minutes to get over Down.”
Not many predicted Clare would be in the shake-up for promotion this year under the newly appointed Fitzgerald because they’re without 12 of last year’s panel for a variety of reasons, including star players like Eoin Cleary, Keelan Sexton, Ciarán Russell, Cathal O’Connor, and Jamie Malone.
Clare football team manager, Mark Fitzgerald.
In their absence a new group of players has been blooded and proven both their ability and character by winning five of their six League matches, with the stand-out result a victory over Offaly that saw them come from nine points down with 10 minutes of normal time to play.
“We have a lot of inexperienced lads that can play football but playing football and managing football are two different things on the pitch,” says Fitzgerald.
“I think that’s probably reflective in some of our performances like Antrim, Wicklow, Limerick, we were up six or seven points. Limerick came down to two points, Antrim came down to three points, probably a more experienced team wouldn’t let that happen.
“But the Offaly game was a bizarre one really where you come from nine points down to two points up and yet you let Offaly run the length of the pitch and give the referee a decision to give a penalty and at that stage, even when the penalty goes over, you’re just going… and I spoke to the Offaly manager, I just said, ‘Listen, sorry, it feels like robbery’. But what do you say, like?”
They’ll happily take the win against Down on Sunday by an means necessary too. Promotion to Division Two would surely further accelerate the development of their young panel.
“Well I think it’s huge because you’ll have the lads that are left have been in Division Two for six or seven years and I think that has helped us this year to navigate our way to where we are today. But for the new crop coming through, your Brian McNamaras, your younger lads, it’s important for them to get the taste of what Division Two is about so from that point of view.
“It’s huge for a county like Clare to keep building and keep punching above their weight. They were there for six of seven years. I think it might have been a little bit longer but you just want to get back to that level all the time. You want to be challenging yourself all the time.”
