Clonlara’s chances of becoming Clare SHC champions are still alive, their captain John Conlon is understandably delighted to still be in with a shout of raising the Canon Hamilton.
By Jamesy Mc Conigley
Clare Senior hurler John Conlon was grateful to see Rory Mc Gann’s umpire raise the white flag on the 64th minute of the 2016 Clare SHC Final. “Ballyea got their tails up after they got the goal, look it we were lucky enough to come out of it at the end”
Conlon mentioned how the pendulum changed in the space of 10 minutes towards the end of the game, “It looked like we were going well, four up with 15 minutes to go, we had a few bad wides and we could have pushed it out to five or six points.”
He praised his inter-county and club team-mate Cathal ‘Tots’ O’Connell for his late equalising point. “It was a testament to Tots to pull it out of the bag and we’ll have to go back to the drawing board and refocus and get back for whenever, next week or the week after.”
Unity and composure was shown by Clonlara late on after watching Tony Kelly fire Ballyea into the lead with 62 minutes on the clock, “fair play to Tots for getting it, that’s why you want a lad like him on your team.” He added “The management we have this year are very stable, calm and collective and it’s rubbed off on us, they’ve helped us focus ourselves and the game is never over till the whistle is gone.”
Content to have another crack at Ballyea in the replay, Conlon believes their opponents will also be glad to have another game to resolve it, “Ballyea probably thought they had it won at the end but they were going into the second half and we went four, five points up and they were hoping they would get a draw too.”
But the primary school teacher admitted that he was delighted to get the draw come the final whistle and is already turning his attention the replay, “Their wasn’t much in it, there was two great teams, Ballyea are a super team and we’ll do battle again.”