O’Loughlin upbeat as lessons learnt

HIS team produced a brave and defiant display to properly test warm favourites Waterford, but the failure to ultimately garner the spoils left Clare boss Ger O’Loughlin deeply disappointed in Thurles yesterday afternoon.

“My initial feeling is one of fierce disappointment. The thing was we came down as underdogs but we gave it everything I’m disappointed that, on another day, we might just have got over the line.

“We gave away some soft scores in the last 15 minutes and there were one or two frees, a bit dubious. That’s the way the game goes but we’ll take an awful lot of heart out of it. We introduced an awful lot of new lads this year and they did us proud today. Moral defeats aren’t much good to us really. They gave everything. We’ll go away very disappointed but I think that down the road that game will bring a lot of maturity to the team.”