Moloney praises courage of Clare marksmen
WHILE Clare weren’t able to make any of their first-half goal chances count, jointmanager Donal Moloney gave credit to his team for how they continued to look for opportunities. ‘We created five or six goal chances,’ he said, ‘we created them but didn’t take them, that was the issue. ‘We were…not clean through but we had opportunities on five or six occasions but they didn’t come off. ‘But the guys had the courage to go for them, the build-up play was good but the finish wasn’t there today. ‘Some of that was down to great defending, how they scrambled back at times was very, very good. A couple of their defenders were excellent from that point of view. ‘Decision-making for the last ball might have been missing a couple of times but they’ll come off yet. If you don’t keep trying we wouldn’t have scored the goal we got, which was a brilliant creation,’ Moloney (below) added. When a goal did arrive, it was for Cork, and possibly shouldn’t have counted due to the ball going dead in the buildup, according to Moloney. ‘It was a wide ball, I believe, based on TV cameras,’ he said. Nevertheless, having such a game under their belts will stand to them when Waterford come to Cusack Park next weekend, the Déise not in action yesterday. ‘You could train for two months but you’d never replicate that,’ Moloney said. ‘It is a big factor. ‘We look forward to it. The guys are very disappointed to lose but if you don’t put everything into it you won’t learn about yourself. The new Championship format is very, very different and it’ll be very interesting yet. Look at what happened in the other game today. This could be wide open yet. ‘They [Cork] were able to respond quite well — they have some great players and can conjure up the response. It was touch and go, we didn’t get ahead a couple of times but we’re playing away from home as well. ‘We’re in Cork’s back yard and it’s not easy to turn them over down here. I don’t know if any team will find it easy to do that down here.’