McNamara praises ‘unbelievable’ Adare defence
“Unbelievable,” was teammate Wayne McNamara’s summary, “To hold a full-forward line of Toomevara’s calibre, a full-forward line many counties would love to have, to restrict Toomevara to just ten points in total — fantastic.”
In the middle of that trio, marking John O’Brien, JP Healy was only too aware, as the clock ticked down, that Adare were desperately defending a three-point lead.
“We knew they had to go for a goal with the last couple of frees, and we knew that if we could hold them out we’d win. If they got the goal he might have played another few minutes of injury time!
“Thank God we held them out, got the win, great result. There’s a huge desire to do well in Munster this year, we’ve let it slip a few times. Last year for example, we only had a week to get ready for it. This time we had four weeks, we were ready.
“We want to win county titles but at this stage we want to take the next step also, we want to be Munster champions and God willing we’ll still be hurling after Christmas, have a cut off the All-Ireland series. If you’re winning county titles, that’s the stage you want to get to.”
That hunger sustained Adare and inspired them to lift themselves off the canvas at a time when Toomevara had them reeling with punch after unanswered punch, six points after the break reducing what had seemed a comfortable lead to just two points.
Stopping that Toomevara train in its tracks took character, courage and a point from their captain, corner-forward Donncha Sheehan.
A dangerous ball was centred by substitute Andrew O’Connell and batted out to the in-rushing Sheehan by full-forward Liam Costello; it should have been a goal, but Donncha’s shot rocketed over the crossbar. No matter, it put Adare back on the right road.
“We hurled well in the first half and that’s hard to maintain,” Donncha explains, “They have their period of dominance too, and maybe we sat back a small bit.
But when the pressure really came on, in the last 10 minutes, we started getting it right again, giving our forwards ball they could run on to, good ball.
“It’s about keeping your head under pressure, and that’s what we did. De La Salle now, Waterford champions; we hadn’t looked beyond this game so I don’t know what to expect. The lads will look at the video tomorrow, get the homework done for that, see what comes from it.”
‘The lads’ will be led by team manager Ger O’Loughlin, who has done a wonderful job with this Adare side. We had trained very hard since the county final and while none of us underestimated the challenge, I always felt today was going to be Adare’s day,” said O’Loughlin.
“They showed tremendous hunger; we have a small squad, a few lads away, but there’s great credit due to all 24 on this panel for the effort they put in, in training and in these games.
“I was hoping we’d built up enough of a lead to hold on. It wasn’t our intention to sit back, defend; we had regrouped and our intention was to attack, repeat what we’d done in the first-half. Realistically though they were always going to come back at us, but in recognising that, we died for a while in that half, we lost our shape. They seemed to have an extra man, it was hard to figure out exactly what was gone wrong. But they were working hard to create that extra man, they had nothing to lose after the break.
“We managed to stem the tide, finally got a point after 24 minutes – a bit of a worry, that it took so long. That settled us again, and we managed to get a few more scores to hang on. But any time you’re playing a side like Toomevara it’s going to be a battle, they’re not going to give you anything easy. We had our homework done, and that will take you a long way.
“We’re there on merit, De La Salle are there on merit – two new teams in the Munster final.”
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