Kiely: firepower just not adequate

JOHN KIELY wasn’t dismissive of the effort which his Waterford side put in against Clare in Ennis yesterday.

But, he didn’t mince his words when admitting that they couldn’t expect victory by scoring just one point from play.

“You just don’t deserve to win a game after that kind of carry-on,” he commented.

Meanwhile, new Clare manager Frank Doherty revealed he had demanded more of his players in the second half, saying: “there’s no point in training for seven months and go out for an hour and 10 minutes and not giving the lot. You have to empty the tank! We definitely should have had more scores by half-time, but we were scoring erratically. There was decent enough ball going in but it was coming out just as fast.”

What won the game ultimately for him was ‘belief and passion and a year waiting for this to come’.

“These lads were hurting since last year. I knew they would keep going. When Waterford went down a man that was a plus and I tried to get David Connole on the ball as much possible. He was the one I wanted free to carry ball.”

Praising Connole for a major input (he was his man-of-the-match) Doherty acknowledged the importance of the late free won by wing-back John Hayes — which put them ahead in injury time. “That was a vital free and the other score (from Stephen Hickey) put the icing on the cake.”

Looking ahead to the semi-final against Kerry on June 15, he says it will be ‘a privilege’ for his young team (pointing out that there are 11 U21’s in the panel and six played yesterday). “I feel it’s going to help their game.

“As far as I am concerned you could pick the best footballers in Ireland and they probably wouldn’t beat Kerry. We’ll go down there, we have nothing to fear. We’ll give it a lash and we’ll try our best.”

As significant a display as it was, the Waterford boss said that their League win over Antrim in Casement Park ‘didn’t matter’ at this stage.

“Today was the day,” he commented. “We were a bit flat at half time. It was hard to get them going. We never clicked up front, it never happened for us. Clare have improved. We beat them in the League, 1-13 to 0-10 and that was a decent game of football. But I thought today’s wasn’t. Clare worked hard. When we went seven points to five up they really got stuck in. And when we lost a man and they ran us a lot. They had a lot of pace.”