THERE may have been a touch of deja vu for Colm Collins as he picked over the wreckage of another All-Ireland quarter-final wipeout.
His achievement in lifting Clare from Division Four to Division Two and keeping them there, while reaching the last eight of the Championship twice now with a county that has had no underage success of note commands the height of respect and praise.
But, having shipped an 11-point defeat to Kerry at this stage six years ago without landing a blow, the fact that they never really involved themselves in a contest here was difficult to swallow.
READ MORE: Colm Boyle column - Mayo can tame Kerry
“That's a tough one,” Collins admitted. “Even if it was only an under-12 team and you took them out and they didn't perform, you'd be cheesed off afterwards.
“I don't think the lads would have been happy with how they played. But you're only as good as you're allowed to play.
“Sometimes you can take away from the winning team and I'm in no way taking from Derry's performance, they were really good.”
Derry boss Rory Gallagher said that the approach from their side was to “open up the game” and force Clare out of their comfort zone.
He said: “We had a good idea that Clare’s game plan was going to be to keep the thing very tight and conservative and they set their stall out, conceding the kickouts, so we wanted to open up the game as early as possible and while we missed a number of point chances I thought we took the goals very well early on and it left Clare having to change tack which didn’t suit the way they wanted to go about it.”
Gallagher had bullishly predicted ahead of the game that Derry would win if they played well.
He elaborated: “I just felt Clare are a very good side but they haven’t been at the business end of the Championship. We’re after coming from beating three Division One teams, I know the quality of our players.
“You go into games against Donegal, Monaghan and Tyrone, you can’t hand on heart say you’re definitely going to win, far from it.
“We felt we had superior players to Clare that had operated at a higher level, maybe not as consistently as they have, but we’ve operated at it, you know.
“But, at the end of the day, you play the Donegal's and Tyrone's and Monaghans you can’t say that 10 times out of 10. If you win six or six and a half out of 10 you’d be going well.”
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