All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship semi-final: Kilenny 1-25 Clare 1-22
KILKENNY’S bench brought “a freshness” to get them over the line and back to the All-Ireland final for the third time in five years, manager Derek Lyng has said.
Lyng who will now be preparing for his first final as manager hailed the impact of the bench with Cian Kenny and Padraig Walsh both among their nine scorers.
“They all made a really positive impact,” he said.
“They brought a freshness to it. Maybe it got us set up a little bit better. They gave Eoin a few more options from puck-outs, as well. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don’t.
“All those players that came on have been showing form in training. We found it hard to pick the 15. It just shows we have a competitive squad. But you need that impact from players when they come in.”
He was very content with how they curbed Clare’s starting forward to just 1-6 from play with Mikey Butler again assigned the task of man-marking Tony Kelly.
“You look at all options,” he said about giving such a responsibility to a player.
“It wasn’t just about Mikey on Tony Kelly. It was a collective.
He can’t be expected to do it by himself. Fantastic player, but they have excellent forwards, as well outside of Tony Kelly. From one to seven, eight, nine, I think we managed it pretty well.”
Brian Lohan insisted Clare will “dust ourselves down and we’ll come back again”.
The Clare boss added: “The second-half went so quickly I don’t know if there was a particular point in it. They do what they do up here. They took their chances, they were very accurate and efficient in the use of the ball.”
Explaining the rationale for playing the opening half with a sweeper, he said: “Last year we felt we played the game on their terms. They had the extra defender back and we didn’t make use of the ball the way we might and left a huge amount of space.
“We didn’t want to be out of the game at half-time. I know we were just about in the game and we didn’t want to be out of it again, conceding goals early on.
Also, we didn’t want to push up on them, it’s hard enough defending their forwards. But to defend against that quality and that space, we just didn’t want to do that.”
