Davy Fitzgerald: 'We'll keep fighting'

By Brian Murphy

For the second year in a row, Clare tasted defeat in their opening game of the Munster Senior Hurling Championship.

As always, a one-point defeat to neighbors Limerick tastes bitter, but it didn't come with quite the same sense of doom as last year's losses, when the Banner County were All-Ireland champions.

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Here, Clare were short four of their most important players, had joint captain Pat Donnellan sent off just before half-time and came up agonisingly short against a seasoned Limerick side.

"They were all phenomenal, every one of them battled very hard and showed great courage and commitment," Fitzgerald said of his players. "We were down to 14 men at half-time and had to play a lot of the second half with 14. Went down six points and very nearly pulled it out of the bag.

"We're just going through a rough patch at the moment, for one particular reason or another. But that's the way it goes and I'm very proud of my guys, very proud of the way they fought, blocked, tackled and hassled."

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Having battled their way back from six points down to level through the brilliant Shane O'Donnell with four minutes to go only to lose to a sucker of a late point, Clare can consider themselves unlucky.

"It's tough, losing games by points that you could win," Fitzgerald continued. "But at the same time, I don't care if we lose the next and go out of the championship, we'll go back training and we'll come back next year and the year after. As long as I'm over Clare, we'll keep fighting.

"While we might have a few knockers, there are good people in Clare, we have some destructive ones but you have an awful lot of good ones. I'm thrilled with the support we've got this year for the team. They stood behind us and fair play to them. They're good and we'll do our best for them."

The superb form of their play-making, ball-winning, lion-hearted full-forward Shane O'Donnell aside, Aaron Cunningham's cameo was the story of the game for Clare.

Introduced off the bench on 48 minutes, Cunningham plundered 2-1 and gave the Banner the kind of edge they had lacked in attack all afternoon. Had Fitzgerald known the Wolfe Tones man was capable of making such an impact?

"You see, when a game goes on like that, people get tired and the more it goes on, you introduce fresh legs like that and it makes a difference. And if his confidence is up, and Aaron has always that ability in him," Fitzgerald said.

"But in saying that I'm very proud today - I'd three new debutants, thought David Reidy worked, the amount of tackles and blocks, I think we had eight or nine turnovers in the first half. Shane Golden, Gudgie (Gearoid O'Connell), they were thrown into the deep end today and I'm immensely proud of all of them.

"They ran themselves into the ground. We went six points down in the second half - we did not throw in the towel. We showed phenomenal character, so we did, and I am wicked, wicked proud of the guys.

"And I can't tell you. I don't know when it will turn for us, but I know - myself and the lads - we'll stay with it. I don't care who says what, we'll stay with it, whether it is this year, next year or the year after, and we will stick to our principles that we've had from day one. And that will be that we'll work hard and be honest, and we have a set of rules and we'll stick to them.

"And I would absolutely do anything for them bunch of boys; they're a phenomenal bunch of guys."

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