‘Once you let them off the hook they’ll punish you’

DEJECTED Clare manager Anthony Daly heaped praise on Cork, declaring they are not All-Ireland champions for nothing and are the best team in the country so far this season.

Daly felt there were similarities between last year’s All-Ireland semi-final and this game.

“Like the 2005 game there were two periods in this game which cost us. I could not have asked for a better start, but they hit hard just before half time, and again after the break, which effectively won them the match.

“Like all good teams, once you let them off the hook they’ll punish you and Cork did that to us. It’s very disappointing. Cork are the best team in the country but I don’t think we are a million miles away from them.

“We now face into the qualifiers and hope to claw our way out of there, and that’s not going to be easy because there are a couple of very good teams in there along with us, like Galway and Limerick.

“There are an awful lot of people who write about having the solutions and telling us how to go about beating Cork, but it’s not that easy.

“We have the very best players in Clare and they gave it all they had and I’m proud of them for the way they battled to the final whistle. But on the day we had to play second fiddle to one of the best teams around. I have no complaints about the result.

“Look how well Joe Deane played. Give him half a chance and he’ll skin you, but we knew how good he and his colleagues were. We simply couldn’t maintain our good start and we paid the penalty for it.

“To be fair you find it very hard to get a goal against Cork, but by the same token they find it very hard to get one against us also. I suppose they have a better know-how to score from long distance than we do.

“We probably should have brought on Jonathan Clancy a lot earlier. We were toying with the idea, but we decided to let it go for a few minutes and in that time Cork did the damage. I’ll take the responsibility for that. Those kind of decisions or lack of them goes with the territory.

“I know people will be frustrated looking at the loose man at the back, but while it certainly shored up our defence, it left gaps elsewhere and Cork exploited them to the full.

“It’s something for us to ponder. We’ll have a look at the video and see where we went wrong and try and regroup.

“There is no quick fix for us. We’ll just train hard like we have been doing and take it from there.”