CLARE WILL NOT have to search too far to motivation to pump them up before the Munster final on the first day of July.
The memories of last summer’s loss at that stage to Cork are fresh, the memories of last month’s defeat to Cork in Munster are fresher still.
There is a grievance there that Clare have been nursing and joint manager Gerry O’Connor hopes they can harness it in the wake of booking their final spot with yesterday’s success over Limerick.
“It has been some turnaround (in a week) but still look it, we’re on a journey. We started this journey last November over in Fenway in Boston. We said that every competition that we entered, whether it was Fenway, whether it was the Munster league or the All-Ireland series or the Munster championship, we were going to commit to it fully.
“We’re playing Cork in a Munster final, we have a lot of unfinished business with Cork from earlier on this year and from last year and we’re really looking forward to (the final), which I presume will be Thurles to expressing ourselves. It’s a huge carrot but we’ve had four incredible games in Munster.”
O’Connor was enthused that Clare triumphed in their ‘fortress’ in Cusack Park and identified the renewed connection with their supporters as key to their recent run of three wins on the bounce.
“It’s a great feeling. We mentioned it all week, this is our fortress and our field and we really wanted to strengthen the connection we’d been making with our supporters since the Waterford game here. They were the 16th man.
“I think there was a reconnection with our supporters and they’ve been just magnificent. They were magnificent in Thurles but they were superb here today. They really drove on the team when it was needed.
“I think there was a bit of a disconnect with our supporters over the last number of years, the most positive aspect for us is to look around here, see all these people who we recognise from our U21 days and to give a performance like we did in that second half.
“The thing about playing at home is you can be under more pressure. Our guys fed off the energy that was coming down off the terrace and delivered a top class performance.”
It was striking that for the second successive Sunday, Clare finished the match in an extremely strong fashion. They outscored Tipperary 1-14 to 0-11 in the second half last Sunday and Limerick by 0-13 to 0-6 in the same time frame yesterday.
“It’s a credit to our conditioning team that Kelvin Harold is leading, that our guys finished as strongly as they did. That’s three games that we’ve finished incredibly strong in. They looked as if they could keep going for another half an hour.
“We’ve worked really, really hard on our recovery and on our fitness banks over the last six months. We didn’t finish strong, mentally and physically, last year. It’s something we’ve really focused on, finishing the last eight minutes of the first half and the last eight minutes of the second half really strong.
“At the start of the second half when Limerick started to come back on to us, they had the breeze, they had a lot of momentum but we were really composed and we were really deliberate in how we built the play through the lines and that was the key.
“We didn’t deviate from the game plan that we discussed at half-time. Build the play, don’t make heroes out of their half-back line, don’t bomb ball down on top of them and we felt that we would get opportunities and we did.”
O’Connor didn’t have a clear view of the incident that saw wing-forward David Reidy dismissed in the first half.
“I didn’t (see it) no. That’s what we’re hearing and that’s what was said to us at half-time but look the referees have a decision to make and look we’re not going to comment on any referee decision. We’ll go through whatever process we have to go through to see if there was an actual injustice done there.”
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