The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
What they said
Eamonn Fitzmaurice, Kerry manager
I just think we played well. The lads played well today. I think there’s massive credit going to the players. We played well and I think we won most battles on the field and the lads showed what they’re all about.
It’s great to get the lads to get them football. The thing about it was David Clifford was a minor last year, with the exception of him all the other lads have been training with us. A lot of them would have been last summer, a lot of them would have been involved with us in 2016 so they’ve been developing away in the background and they were ready to play today. They’ve been chomping at the bit for a chance and I think they’ve an awareness as well – all you have to do is look at the experienced players who weren’t playing today – that if you don’t take your chance you might not get a second one. I think a lot of credit is due to the debutants. They’ve a lot of big game experience they’ve played a lot of games. They’ve played a lot of big games in the league this year against Division 1 opposition so they were ready.
I wasn’t [disappointed in Clare] we just worried about our own thing and I think to be fair to Clare they weren’t allowed play today, so many of our lads did well, they found it hard to get their game going and impose their game on us.
Colm Collins, Clare manager
The first thing you’ve to do after that game is to compliment the opposition. I mean a fine display, some excellent football all over the pitch, some great lines of runs. What was really impressive was that there was no stupid shooting, everybody was playing the ball in to their best position and they got great scores, so credit to Kerry for a start... From our point of view you’d be absolutely totally disappointed with the way we played. I thought that everything that we talked about during the week it just went out the window.
We star ted well with a couple of points and then we star ted to take wrong options, star ted shooting from stupid places and then when they star ted to go ahead we didn’t react at all. We seemed to lose track of runners and our defence was under pressure and then we were defending from behind which I don’t think you can do against quality forwards. I think that’s one thing that’s vital if you’re going up against forwards of that calibre you’ve got to make the primary ball a contest and we didn’t in too many places and then times when we did win possession instead of attacking them we stopped and turned back and gave them time to reset. All in all I’d be very disappointed with how we played, but you’ve got to preface that by saying it was a fantastic display by the opposition and credit to them, end of story.