Donal Moloney Clare didn’t experiment in Munster League success

Clare joint manager Donal Moloney said the Banner have been fielding their best team in the Munster League rather than experimenting with their line-ups.

Speaking after yesterday’s win over Tipperary, Moloney said: “That’s our best fit team out there at the moment. It’s not as if we’re doing a huge amount of experimenting. Most of that’s enforced.

“The reality is that most of the other guys are injured and won’t be back all through the spring. That’s the reality. If other teams are resting guys then fair play to them but we’re not in that camp. We’re playing what is our best fit team right now.”

Moloney was happy with how the newcomers to the Clare side played, and their option-taking in particular: “That will come with a bit of experience as well. The young guys we’re most pleased about - we have had an influx of young guys for the last 12 or 18 months and we are really pleased. Hopefully the underage system in Clare can keep producing guys like that that are ready to step in at senior level.”

The national league will be “another level up”, he warned, particularly the opener against Tipperary in a fortnight.

It’s like the steps of the stairs, Munster League, to national league and then into championship. It’ll be a different level of intensity that night.

Tipperary boss Liam Sheedy said he had “no real complaints”, and that the better team had won.

“Look, you’re going to struggle to win any game when you concede four goals and any time they got the ball in it looked like danger and we struggled to contain them in there.

Their running game really hit home, and when Tony (Kelly) plays the deep role and comes back out to find space for himself, we struggled to deal with that.

“For the last eight weeks we’ve put in serious work, and again this week, so we might have been leggy, but that’s my responsibility. When the national league starts it’s hard to get that work in, but we learned a lot from today.”