Defeats can be dealt with but poor performances are tougher to take and that’s the stance Gary Brennan was taking after Clare’s twelve point defeat to Kerry.
“Whatever about losing it was a long away from the performance we were looking for so that’s the most disappointing thing, if we played well and got beaten you’d say one thing but the nature of the performance was just very disappointing” Brennan told The Clare Herald.
Clare’s captain felt they faded away in the second half but was relatively happy with how they responded to conceding two goals inside the opening five minutes. “I actually thought we responded fairly well to that and settled into the first half. Our second half then was very flat, nowhere near the pace that was required, it was pedestrian for a finish”.
Three players under the age of twenty featured for Colm Collins’ side over the hour. Gary highlights this as a positive and believes the likes of Pearse Lillis, Keelan Sexton and Cian O’Dea can have even bigger roles for the County in years to come.
“The lads are showing great spirit this year and great fight and really wanting to get into them and developing their football. Their young guys, they’re only out of minor so in five or six years time hopefully they’ll be very strong players for Clare”.
Learning and educating is a big part of Brennan’s professional life as a secondary school teacher in St Flannan’s College. He outlines what was the biggest lesson they can take from Sunday’s semi-final defeat.
“We brought the ball into tackles today and you do it against the best teams you get punished, I don’t know how many times we were turned over I’d say the stats will be frightening and we got punished when we did that today. Listen if we can learn from that, hopefully we’ll try build for the qualifiers again and you never know what might happen”.
It’s the qualifiers now for Clare as they find themselves in the ‘A’ side of the draw. The Clondegad man is confident of a response as they go through the back door. “I think so, we’ve shown in previous years when we have gone out of the Munster Championship we’ve had some good qualifier performances, it’s to try get a couple of wins and get ourselves on the road”.