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Cork's Shane O'Neill tussles with Darach Honan of Clare. INPHO/Cathal Noonan
Fuzzy head

Clare's Darach Honan left 'dizzy' by Shane O'Neill helmet swipe

The Banner forward thought Cork had snatched victory before Domhnall O’Donovan’s late point.

CLARE’S DARACH HONAN was left with ‘a weird feeling’ after Clare needed a last-gasp point to rescue a game that they had never been behind in until the 71st minute.

Honan was at the centre of a couple of the game’s pivotal moments. He was cautioned, along with Shane O’Neill, after receiving a hurl to the helmet from the Cork defender. He also had a fantastic goal-scoring chance but did not catch his strike sweetly and was denied by Rebels goalkeeper Anthony Nash.

Honan told TheScore.ie he was looking forward to another crack at Cork, on 28 September, and praised Domhnall O’Donovan for his late point that left the scores level at the final whistle. He also revealed to being temporarily out of the loop after his run-in with O’Neill.

“Ah, I won’t go into it too much,” he said. “We both got yellows but I didn’t feel I deserved a yellow anyway.” Honan added:

I was a bit dizzy there for a while but I’m grand now. It’s nothing too serious… It didn’t [affect my game], to be honest. For a couple of minutes I was dizzy enough but I’m not going to make a big deal out of it.”

The season will now roll on until the last Saturday in September but some of the Clare panel have an U21 final to occupy their immediate thoughts. “It’s a strange feeling there at the moment,” Honan confessed. “I suppose we’ll just have to turn off for the next few days, recover and then it’s back to training.”

Honan refused to accept that Clare had played to the maximum of their potential in the tied game. He believes there is still room for improvement ahead of the replay. He added, “We thought we’d be able to get revenge for beating us in the Championship today. It didn’t turn out that way but hopefully we’ll be able to finish with a blast again the next day.”

The forward was left to plan on getting a Friday off work, so he could meet up with his teammates on the eve of another battle with Cork. Asked to pick out a turning point in a match that, for a long time, seemed to be a procession to glory, Honan could not get O’Donovan’s nail-biting equaliser out of his mind.

“It was a great score,” he proclaimed. “I was sure the game was gone at that stage so great, great score from Domhnall. Fair fucks to him in fairness.”

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