For the second successive year since their relegation in 2018, Clonaslee are back in the intermediate football final.
Clonaslee played with 14 men for 41 minutes and were reduced to 13 men with ten minutes to play.
Darren Hogan went early on with Diarmuid Conroy shown his marching orders later in the second half before Glen McEvoy was shown red with the game in injury time.
Despite all of that, Clonaslee were only beaten by two points as they battled and scraped for their lives.
12 months on, star forward Niall Corbet, who plays in goals for the Laois footballers, believes that discipline is something that his side have worked on this year.
However, he feels they learned a lot aside from discipline in defeat last year that they hope to bring to Saturday’s intermediate final with Crettyard.
He said: “It was tough (to lose). You can look back at the red cards and say that was what our downfall was but really it was the first half and how we started the game.
“I think it went 0-4 to 0-1, 0-8 to 0-1 and then 0-9 to 0-4 before we got a couple of long range lucky frees to go in three down at half time when we didn’t deserve to be.
“We certainly left something behind us in the first 20 minutes whereas if we had started well and still got the red cards, it would have been an easier game to manage.
“But we were disappointed and discipline is something that has let us down over the years. It is something that we as a group need to change.
“Red cards happen and unfortunately because we are Clonaslee it probably gets highlighted a bit more. But at the same time there were probably bigger things we learned from starting a game well to minimising a team’s dominant spell.
“Rosenallis kicked really well for the first 15 minutes and we couldn’t hold onto the ball at all.”
Like Crettyard, Clonaslee too have brought through a number of young, exciting players into their team over recent years.
Sean Condon, Barry Kelly, Liam Senior, Oisin Murray, Jack Owens, DJ Callaghan, Cian Barrett, Daire Hogan, Bob Downey, Ryan Kilroe and Ciaran Fitzgerald are all under the age of 21 and the majority of them should feature on Saturday.
Corbet says those young players have given the club a real boost. But he believes not having a league campaign for all of those lads to fully bed in hasn’t helped.
He said: “In the county final last year, everyone was talking about how young Rosenallis were. And they were but they were at a different stage to us as a lot of them are 23, 24 and 25.
“Where as ten of our players who played in the county final were subsequently playing in the U-20 final a couple of weeks later.
“So we are very young but we probably don’t get that much noise about us being a young team because Clonaslee have always been hovering around the same level.
“Bob Downey and Jack Owens were involved with the Laois U-20s this year and Sean Condon was with them last year.
“DJ Callaghan and Liam Senior have been on hurling squads so all of these lads are getting exposure to county training which is important.
“James McRedmond didn’t even play with us last year so to get him back and see what he can do with the hat-trick in the semi final is huge too.
“I know all teams can say the same about not having a league, but this young team would really have benefited from Division 2 games against the likes of Killeshin and Stradbally.
“We would probably have been more confident with those games under our belt.
“But we want to be senior – whether that happens Saturday or not – I think we are set up now to compete up there better than in other years.
“That at the end of the day is where you want to be.”
As a former League of Ireland player with UCD, Waterford and Bohemians, Corbet could have been tempted to go play some soccer locally when the club season ends on Saturday evening.
But instead, he says his focus will quickly shift back to Laois where they will look to resume their Division 2 campaign later this month.
He said: “The focus now is solely on Clonaslee and getting back up to senior – that is my only aim at the moment.
“With the way football is going with Laois at the moment, it is right when the soccer season kicks off domestically or the off season nationally.
“So my mind will be occupied on that with Laois in a few weeks time hopefully.”
SEE ALSO – Crettyard captain Murphy hoping his side can bounce straight back to senior
The post Corbet’s Clonaslee hoping to learn from 2019 failings and claim intermediate glory appeared first on Laois Today.
source https://www.laoistoday.ie/2020/10/02/corbets-clonaslee-hoping-to-learn-from-2019-failings-and-claim-intermediate-glory/
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