Inside Track with John McIntyre

THE Loughrea supporters waited for their heroes on the embankment heading to the dressing rooms at Kenny Park on Sunday. Most of them had probably thought that the champions were exiting the senior hurling title race until their grandstand finish somehow reeled in Clarinbridge.

The Loughrea team deserved to be clapped and cheered after salvaging a desperate situation. Seven points down facing into the wind, Tommy Kelly’s team was gone beyond flirting with disaster. They were on the ropes, and it was difficult to see a way out for the title holders, who had yet to catch fire in this year’s championship.

But as more than one neutral observed afterwards, that’s why Loughrea are champions. It was, however, a tough watch for their supporters. For much of the quarter-final, it appeared Clarinbridge were sick of being beaten by Loughrea; and ‘The Town’ were sick of beating them. One team was really up for it, the other lacking the necessary inspiration and quality.

It surely made for only one result, but up stepped Tiernan Killeen to arguably deliver the individual display of the championship. He broke Clarinbridge hearts with a string of mighty points and was virtually unplayable. Killeen’s example inspired his team to awake from their slumber, with Athony Burns’ second-half goal also pivotal to the outcome.

Loughrea are only going to get better now, but the result was a bitter pill to swallow for a Clarinbridge outfit losing their fifth consecutive championship game to the same opposition. That poor run eventually gets into players’ heads, but the outstanding TJ Brennan must be pardoned in this context. Evan Niland also did his best to defy the turning of the tide.

That was the theme of the weekend’s quarter-finals – all the winners could have been beaten, which admittedly is a stretch when one of the matches ended in a 10-point defeat for Oranmore-Maree, who had Turloughmore in all kinds of trouble until collapsing in the final 10 minutes.

Craughwell substitute Adam Quirke’s goal floored Sarsfields with almost the last puck of the game 24 hours earlier; while Victor Manso’s green flag deep into stoppage time inflicted an agonising defeat on Tommy Larkins, for whom Eanna Murphy’s six-point haul must be a record for a goalkeeper at senior club level.

Pictured: Loughrea’s Anthony Burns on the run against Joshua Ryan of Clarinbridge during Sunday’s Senior Hurling quarter-final at Kenny Park. Photo: David Cunniffe.