We had to perform, says Clare’s 'keeper Donal Tuohy
There was considerable pressure on this Clare team to make an All-Ireland semi-final, according to Banner goalkeeper Dónal Tuohy.
Having fallen at the quarter-final hurdle in 2016 and 2017, as well as back-to-back Munster final defeats, this Clare group couldn’t afford another setback at Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Saturday.
“Absolutely,” replied the Clare keeper when asked if the team were under pressure making the journey south to Cork.
Having lost a second provincial final, there was a lot of hurt. We knew we had to give a performance.
Tuohy, who is enjoying his second season as the first-choice shot-stopper, pointed to two notable differences between their performance against Wexford and that against Cork in the Munster final.
“When Wexford got the goal, Podge [Collins] got a point straightaway. We probably didn’t give the same reaction [in the Munster final].
“That brought the goal back to two points in terms of its impact and that was a crucial reaction.
“Even when we got a good lead, we tried to keep the workrate constant. If they got a purple patch, we didn’t want our workrate to falter. That was another difference to the Munster final where Cork got a purple patch and our leaders didn’t come to the fore, our workrate didn’t stay at a high level. It was completely different on Saturday.”
For Wexford joint-captain Matthew O’Hanlon, it was a fourth All-Ireland quarter-final defeat in five seasons. He is confident, though, the squad will return “stronger” in 2019 and negotiate a hurdle which has repeatedly tripped them up.
We’ve been knocking on the door for a while and as a group, we wanted to take that next step and get to the last four. It didn’t happen for us,” said the 26-year old defender. “We are disappointed, but there is a really good group of men in this group who’ll be able to pick themselves up.
“There’s an All-Ireland U21 semi-final to look forward to and a few from that team will come through. We are going in the right direction. This thing doesn’t happen overnight. We’ll get there. We’ll continue to develop as a team. We’ll come back bigger and stronger next year.”
O’Hanlon accepts Wexford left themselves with too much to do turning around for the second period — the Banner led 0-16 to 0-9 at half-time. “We had 10 wides in the second half, a couple of them were very scoreable. We didn’t push on when we got the goal. We got it back to three or four.
“They seemed to be able to stop our momentum every time we got two or three scores in a row.”
