Brenner: We hoped Keane would take point

De La Salle goalkeeper Stephen Brenner says he and his fellow defenders were shouting at their team-mates up front to take their point late on in last Sunday’s Munster Club hurling semi-final — until corner-forward John Keane flicked home the winning goal.

The Waterford side looked set for extra time against Newmarket-on-Fergus of Clare but the De La Salle forwards calmly worked the goal opportunity deep in injury time.

“I could hear Bryan Phelan roaring at them to put it over the bar,” said Brenner. “Paidi Nevin had the ball in front of goal and I thought he’d just pop it over, but fair dues to him, he saw John inside and gave him the pass, and John finished well.

“It showed a bit of cuteness, we could have taken the point but the boys were calm enough to work the goal.”

How important was that experience, given De La Salle’s two recent Munster club titles compared to Newmarket, who hadn’t made it out of Clare and into the provincial series since 1981?

“It’s probably a help, alright,” said Brenner. “You’re travelling a fair way, you have to eat earlier than normal, you’re having a puck-around in a strange pitch and you expect theconditions to be pretty heavy. So the fact that you’ve done all that before has to help. We had a puckaround earlier on Sunday in the pitch in Shannon, and it was very muddy, but in fairness the field in Sixmilebridge held up well until late on in the game.

“Those are all things that you don’t really experience that much in the height of summer, so it’s an advantage, certainly, to have been through the mill before.”

Brenner says that they’ll have to improve against the Tipperarychampions, who ousted Sarsfields of Cork in the other semi-final lastweekend.

“We’ll have to be better than we were on Sunday,” said Brenner. “The wides especially are something to look at, but the other way of looking at that is that we had plenty of possession and were making chances. Newmarket put up a huge fight as well — it’s not like we went up to Clare expecting them to roll over, because we weren’t. They were playing only down the road from their own club so they had plenty of support and were well fired up, we had to pull out all the stops to try and beat them. The other side of that is it gives you a few things to work on in training for the next few weeks, and hopefully we’ll get it right for the next day.”