Clare boss Brian Lohan: ‘The two best teams are in the All-Ireland final’

Both Clare and Cork were outsiders to win their semi-finals last weekend against Kilkenny and Limerick, but produced stirring wins to set up the final nobody predicted, a rehash for their epic two-game 2013 decider.

Speaking at Clare’s pre final press conference, Lohan – a double All-Ireland winner as a player in 1995 and ’97 – insisted: “The best teams make it to the All-Ireland final.

“We can have complaints (about previous years) but at the end of the day – last year or the year before or whatever it was – the two best teams are in the All-Ireland final.

“It’s Cork now and they’re there on merit. They’ve beaten Limerick twice. So we can see from the last day…I was in the stand watching the last day…it was just a brilliant experience and brilliant game.”

“The desire they had, the pace that they had, the spirit that they had. The levels of skill. Just the relentless running, the relentless attacking. It was just a real advertisement for hurling and everything that is good in Cork hurling.”

Lohan acknowledged that Clare’s first half performance was poor, an identical scenario to each of the previous years when Kilkenny ended their summer at the same stage.

” There was a lot of frustration at half time that we didn’t play well,” he admitted. “There was a significant breeze, even though it didn’t look it from the stand. But it was significant.

“It suited us an awful lot more in the second half. We had the opportunity to reset. There was a lot of frustration at half-time as I said. We got better and made better decisions.”

“We had to think on our feet. It was kind of a test of character as well. So absolutely it was a good way to win. We feel we can get better and obviously we have to get better as well.”

Speaking immediately afterwards, Lohan stressed that he could easily have taken off “six or seven players” such was the widespread underperformance.

Asked why he opted to stick, rather than twist, for the start of the second half, he explained: “We know this group. We know these guys. We did feel that they were going to get better. The quality of our starters are our starters because generally, they are the best players in those positions. Things didn’t work as well as they could have done, poor decisions, but we did feel there was more in the players.”

“There was a general acceptance amongst everyone inside in the dressing room that we didn’t do as well as we could have done. It wasn’t just amongst the management. It was the whole group, just very frustrated after that first half.”