Gerry O\u2019Connor hailed \u201cthe most physical game of hurling I’ve ever seen in all my life\u201d after \u00c9ire \u00d3g Ennis outlasted Loughmore-Castleiney in an extra-time nailbiter.<\/p>\n
The Clare champions lived on their nerves throughout normal time, with Danny Russell drilling a last-gasp free into the wind from the sideline to force the extra 20 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ll tell you, that was the most difficult free he’s probably ever taken. But if there was any man on this earth that you’d want taking a free for you with time almost up, it’s Danny Russell,\u201d said O\u2019Connor.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has been an incredible leader for us all year, and we were in no doubt that he was going to score.<\/p>\n
\u201cDanny is one of many that were on song. We had to be really at the top of our game to compete in a game like that. The final result definitely didn’t do any justice at all to the challenge that Loughmore brought.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an incredible arm wrestle, and the most physical game of hurling I’ve ever seen in all my life. It was just savage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew exactly what Loughmore were going to do. They were going to launch long puck-outs down on top of our defence all day. It’s very difficult to plan for that, because they’re so good. They have a very simple tactic, but it’s very effective.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir primary target is to win breaking ball, so we had to match them for that, and we did.\u201d O\u2019Connor heaped praise upon his defence for holding Loughmore to 1-16 across 80 minutes of hurling.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were awesome. There’s no other word for it. They were absolutely incredible. Like young Robert Loftus, for an 18-year-old, just after finishing his Leaving Cert.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe amount of performances. Ciar\u00e1n Russell and Aaron Fitz(gerald), who’ve been around this club for a long, long time. These lads are well into their 30s. We’re just thrilled to be across the line.\u201d Half their starting team will be back in action on Sunday, aiming to make a second Munster final when they take on St Finbarr\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cNext Tuesday night, we’ll have the 20 hurlers and the 12 footballers will go back to the footballers and they’ll train with the footballers. That’s the way we do it,\u201d said O\u2019Connor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve been very lucky that both management teams on the football and the hurling front are logical men, and we’re GAA men, and we’re \u00c9ire \u00d3g men, and we communicate as often as we possibly and humanly can.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s a lot of tired bodies in there, and we’re very conscious that they have to go again next Sunday.\u201d They\u2019ll have to bring all that fight and fire again for the challenge of Ballygunner in a fortnight\u2019s time.<\/p>\n
\u201cBring them on,\u201d said O\u2019Connor. \u201cWe’ll absolutely relish the prospect of playing and representing Clare in the Munster final.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gerry O\u2019Connor hailed \u201cthe most physical game of hurling I’ve ever seen in all my life\u201d after \u00c9ire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1965,1128,61,60,850,112],"class_list":["post-143645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-hurling","tag-football","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}