O’Donnell pulls the strings as Clare’s first-half blitz destroys Waterford

Clare 5-18 Waterford 0-20

Squint tight enough, stare long enough and there's a way to see this as the sort of game from which both teams can take succour. You could, if so minded, contend that while one side took the first half at a canter, the other rallied to dominate the second.

Yet to do so would be to needlessly tax the eyes and to stretch reality’s elastic to snapping point. Clare in this mood are on a different plane. To Waterford, certainly. To everyone else, very possibly.

For 35 minutes here they were stupendous. They didn’t so much clean Waterford out as toss them through the spin cycle. Though it won’t give much more than a chalk outline of their supremacy, the tick-tock of their scores in that period tells something of the tale. Four up after 10 minutes, 13 up after 20, 20 up on the half-hour, 23 up at the break. Total eclipse.

But there’s no joy in arithmetic. The pleasure here was in watching a team of limitless potential splash colour on a grey day, bouncing off still-heavy ground as if it were the height of summer.

Podge Collins pinballed around the middle third and sometimes even deeper, breaking up play like a corner-back when needed and scudding hop-perfect ball into the full-forward line when desired.

The Clare half-back line was a rubber wall, with every Waterford puck-out returned as if from a sling-shot.

Inside, Shane O’Donnell was unplayable. The Clare tactic of dragging everyone out to the middle and leaving only O’Donnell and Conor McGrath beyond the 65 probably shouldn’t have bamboozled Waterford quite so thoroughly but even so, O’Donnell made a spectacular amount of hay from it.

Of Clare's first half 4-15, O'Donnell scored 1-2 and directly supplied another 3-3. Midas in a blue helmet.

An education
Why Waterford didn't (a) send someone out to follow Collins around or (b) post a sentry in front of the full-back line or (c) try to find a way to do both is anyone's guess. Clare's relentless scoring left them frozen to the spot and the game got away from them in a hurry.

“I think everyone got a bit of an education there – it was a chastening experience for players and management,” said Waterford manager Derek McGrath afterwards.

“We probably showed a bit of naivety in leaving the lads isolated one-on-one inside in the first half and it’s the nature of the Clare game-plan that they have runners coming from deep, very hard to pick everyone up.

“If you go man-to-man they open the space so when they come down the field they have 60 yards of open space in front of them. We probably got caught a bit like that a few times. Look, we’ll learn from it.”

After going in 4-15 to 0-4 behind at the break, it was inevitable that there’d be some sort of riposte. Waterford had two things going for them in the second half - a stiffish wind at the backs and acute embarrassment in their heads. They were never going to pull back the 22 points but they had to find something to bring with them into next weekend’s final round of matches.

They were helped too by a Clare side that had clearly decided their day's work was done, much to their manager's irritation. In fairness, he had to take a little of the responsibility for it since he changed formation for the second half by dropping Pat Donnellan back as sweeper. Clare ceded heft and craft around the middle and Waterford started to chip away at the scoreboard.

Eight scores
Seven of the first eight scores of the second half went their way, the only problem being that Clare's one intervention was another O'Donnell goal. They beavered away all the same, with Maurice Shanahan, Stephen Molumphy and Paudie Mahony never less than full-hearted.

Even though they took a drubbing overall, outscoring Clare by 0-16 to 1-3 in the second half wasn’t nothing.

“The win was great,” said Davy Fitz. “But I’m very disappointed with the second-half performance. We did some great things in the first half and moved well. But we just totally lost our way in the second half. I want us to be consistent for 70 minutes. But we got the result, that’s all that matters.

“What we did for 35 minutes there was decent. We need to be doing that consistently if we’re to have any chance of retaining. But there are aspects of that that we will talk about, I can tell you that for certain.”

And so they must.

As for the rest of us, all we'll talk about is what wonders they'd wield if and when they did it for 70 minutes.
CLARE: 1 D Tuohy; 2 D O'Donovan, 3 C Dillon, 4 D McInerney; 5 Brendan Bugler (0-1), 6 Conor Ryan (0-1), 7 P O'Connor (0-1); 8 P Donnellan (1-0), 12 Colin Ryan(0-6, 0-5 frees); 10 J Conlon, 11 P Duggan (1-1), 15 P Collins (1-2); 22 S O'Donnell (2-2), 14 C McGrath (0-1), 23 C McInerney (0-2). Subs: 21 T Kelly for Collins (temp) 20-22 mins; 21 T Kelly (0-1) for Conlon ( 29 mins), 18 P Flanagan for Dillon (60 mins), 20 S Golden for Colin Ryan (64 mins); 26 D Reidy for McGrath (67 mins), 23 C O'Connell for McInerney ( 70 mins).
WATERFORD: 1 S O'Keeffe; 2 T de Burca, 3 S Fives, 4 N Connors; 5 J Nagle, 8 K Moran (0-1), 7 Philip Mahony; 19 J Dillon (0-1), 9 S O'Sullivan; 10 R Barry, 11 Pauric Mahony (0-8, 0-6 frees), 12 S Molumphy (0-2); 13 R Donnelly (0-1), 14 S Prendergast, 15 B O'Sullivan (0-4). Subs: 3 B Coughlan for Moran (temp) 11-15 mins; 18 M Shanahan (0-3, 0-2 frees) for Barry, 25 mins; 21 S Roche for Donnelly, 45 mins; 24 K Fitzgerald for Pauric Mahony, 60 mins; 17 S McNulty for Nagle, 63 mins
Referee: James McGrath (Westmeath)