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\nLimerick overhwelmed Clare in this year’s Munster championship<\/p>\n
As Sunday’s All-Ireland Hurling Championship semi-final approaches, the big question surrounds what Clare can do differently in order to create a major shock and book a place in the final.<\/p>\n
The Banner County have usually been entertaining throughout the summer, with supporters in effect left wondering whether high-functioning attack can compensate for a suspect defence.<\/p>\n
The backdrop to Sunday’s tie is the 15-point mauling that Clare received at the hands of their neighbours in Ennis in the Munster SHC.<\/p>\n
On this week\u2019s episode of the RT\u00c9 GAA podcast, Shane McGrath and Shane Dowling discussed what they see reoccurring from previous battles and whether we see something new.<\/p>\n
They feel, once again, the impact of Shane O\u2019Donnell is going to be telling.<\/p>\n
Shane McGrath is concerned that even if Clare put the eggs in the basket of seeking some O\u2019Donnell magic, Limerick may snuff it out.<\/p>\n
“I think Shane O’Donnell on his day is unmarkable, but that depends on the quality of ball coming into him now. But if the quality of ball isn’t coming into him from outside, what can you do?<\/p>\n
“I don’t think Clare are going to get the time out the field to give that quality of ball into him. Mark Rodgers, to be fair to him, he’s not the same fella since he got that bang against Tipp and it was a heavy hit on him. And he seems to me like a guy that’s still trying to find his feet.<\/p>\n
“Who will mark Shane O’Donnell? Is it going to be Sean Finn? Is it going to be Barry Nash? Will Barry go out to field a little bit? Maybe if Tony Kelly wants to start in corner forward and kind of roam out to field a small bit. I think what’s worked well for Clare is when they do leave the space in front of their full line and they try to get the ball in. What I think Clare find hard is, when that plan doesn’t work, I don’t know what the plan B is.<\/p>\n
“Because it could be just shots from way out the field, Tony Kelly taking on a few shots, maybe trying to pull someone out to a position that they’re not comfortable in. Like he’s done time and time again, he might start corner forward and play most of the match around midfield. But if Clare wanted to go after Limerick, I think that has worked for them in previous games.<\/p>\n
\nLimerick overhwelmed Clare in this year’s Munster championship<\/p>\n
“I just don’t know where they’re going to get the space and the time out the field this time to get that quality ball into Shane O’Donnell. To be fair, the Limerick half-back line, the trust that they have in their midfield and half-forward line, is unreal as well. Even against Cork in the league final, they will sit and they will trust that if 10 and 12 fall back, and if 11 falls out to field, their midfielders are going to work hard.<\/p>\n
“And there’s that trust there that they’ll work hard enough to negate them if they do want to drop deep. So that allows William O’Donoghue, that allows Kyle Hayes and Diarmaid Byrnes maybe just to stay and kind of protect the full-back line a bit more. I think there’s a lot of questions for Clare as to how they’re actually going to go about this kind of thing.”<\/p>\n
Shane Dowling believes his county will not be too perturbed by the tactics Clare implore in what could be something of a shootout rather than a tactical affair.<\/p>\n
Dowling, a forward on the team that reclaimed the All-Ireland title in 2018 before coming out of retirement for a spell between the posts last year, reckons that John Kiely won’t be fixated by the threats posed by Clare’s attack and will concentrate far more on his own team.<\/p>\n
Dowling explained: “Surely at this stage, everybody knows Limerick don’t do matchups. I mean, Tony Kelly has got the run of the park anytime he’s played Limerick.<\/p>\n
“He’ll be picked up by whatever position he plays in. Limerick don’t look at opposition and say, ‘oh, you’re going to mark him or you’re going to mark him\u2019. That has been done for years.<\/p>\n
“And I think everybody’s aware of that. And some of the discussions around every Limerick-Clare game in the last couple of years is should Limerick stay with what they’re doing? And should somebody pick up Tony Kelly?<\/p>\n
“Limerick are fine with Tony Kelly getting three or four points from play. If it gets to seven or eight, that is when the concern comes in, but they’re okay with him taking shots from distance.<\/p>\n
“Shane O’Donnell, he sometimes plays in the half forward line, he plays in the full forward lane. He will be picked up by wherever he plays. There will be no match-ups.<\/p>\n
“And there’s a fluidity around, I’d say Clare’s movement, and not so much Limerick.”<\/p>\n
Dowling expects little in the way of a surprise in terms of team selection from Kiely or tactical changes.<\/p>\n
“Limerick trust that they have enough quality in their players to pick up whatever players command them. And the only thing, if I\u2019m Clare, Peter Duggan was exceptional in the air down on Ennis.<\/p>\n
“He was so good. Dan Morrissey came on for the last 10 minutes, 15 minutes, even though the game was over. And he actually stopped every ball.<\/p>\n
“He stopped Peter from catching every ball that went in the top of him. So if the only thing I would try and do from a Clare viewpoint is to try and get Peter on Dan for a lot of the balls because he did seem stopping that. Then he goes on William O\u2019Donoghue or goes on Kyle Hayes.<\/p>\n
“Clare are going have to be very clever in their approach.<\/p>\n
“But I think all they would want to do is to try and get good quality ball into the Clare full forward line.<\/p>\n
“There’s no doubt that the quality of player that Clare has is of a really high level. The concern is that the form hasn’t been where they need it to to get them over the line.<\/p>\n
“The big question is, will we see a big change in form and consistency on Sunday? That’s a million dollar question for Clare.”<\/p>\n
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Listen to the RT\u00c9 GAA Podcast on the RT\u00c9 Radio Player, Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>, and email us at sportpodcasts@rte.ie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Sunday’s All-Ireland Hurling Championship semi-final approaches, the big question surrounds what Clare can do differently in order…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-527975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527975","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=527975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}