THE MANAGER OF the current Clare senior football champions is threatening ‘to withdraw’ their club’s players from the county squad unless they are available to them for games all year round.
Kilmurry-Ibrickane boss Aidan ‘Horse’ Moloney made the claim yesterday after they won the Cusack Cup – a secondary senior league competition in Clare – with a 0-14 to 0-11 final success against St Joseph’s Miltown.
All-Ireland club finalists in 2010, Kilmurry-Ibrickane are one of the most successful senior football clubs in Clare.
They completed back-to-back senior titles in Clare this year before losing out to Dr Crokes at the Munster semi-final stage and they have won six of the last ten championships in the Banner county.
Club players Martin McMahon and Keelan Sexton both featured on the Clare senior side that lost out to Mayo in the All-Ireland qualifiers in July.
Moloney himself won a Munster senior medal when Clare secured that famous triumph back in 1992
Kilmurry-Ibrickane have a rich history of producing players on Clare sides but they weren’t pleased with the situation that developed earlier this year where they refused to play a Cusack Cup match without their county players and ended up having a walkover awards against them.
Then yesterday with two trophies in the cabinet at the close of their 2017 campaign, Moloney revisited that issue when speaking to Clare FM.
“At the end of the day we’ll take control of our players from now on and if our players are not available, they will be available full-time to us from now on.
“And somebody better make structures that suit that because we’ll withdraw our players from the county if they’re not allowed play Cusack Cup for us. That’s fairly clear.
“We’re here in the heart of West Clare trying to keep the club alive and we have a county board that is not helping out in any way, calling off matches and not allowing walkovers without county players.
“We have only two competitions at this point in time and we have great respect because of our record in the Cusack Cup (in) that we are one of the teams that give it 100% respect, but I think the county board has not given us that respect.
“And I think other clubs need to stand up, especially club that took walkovers and went off and kept their head in the sand. It’s a short-term goal for a long-term loss because the club football is going to die in Clare if the Cusack Cup is allowed to go down the road of the Clare Cup.”
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