Clooney-Quin’s title wait goes on a little longer

When Sixmilebridge went ahead for the first time all afternoon 30 seconds into injury time, Clooney-Quin’s tilt at a first Clare senior title in 75 years looked destined to fall into the category of defeats their fellow red-and-green brethren in Mayo know only too well: gallant, heroic even, but ultimately, cruelly, denied.

For most of the second half they’d had Sixmilebridge breathing down their necks as the 2015 champions had wiped out a three-point half-time deficit within five minutes of the restart, and there was a sense that at some stage Sixmilebridge’s greater dynastic know-how would tell.

Clooney-Quin had resisted it with all their might, six times nosing a point ahead again whenever The Bridge had drawn level, but when veteran substitute Niall Gilligan levelled matters once again and then centre-back Seadna Morey bucked the sequence of tit-for-tat points by latching onto a half-blocked clearance to fire over his third point of the day, Sixmilebridge’s superior depth and scoring spread seemed to have been decisive.