Brian Lohan explains what inspired Clare’s comeback in semi-final thriller against Kilkenny

Brian Lohan has admitted his Clare team are fed up with being almost men on big days – as they left the capital knowing the biggest of them all was just two weeks away.

Lohan’s Banner secured a famous two-point victory over Kilkenny to break the Cats’ stranglehold on them in the All-Ireland semi-final.

It took a monumental second-half performance to achieve that after the Clare chief admitted everyone in Banner’s team was “very frustrated” at half-time after coming within five points of the lead.

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“We think we’re a good team,” he said. “We know Kilkenny are a good team but I guess we came in thinking we were better.

“And there was that pressure – losing three games in a row here after three games in a row at Munster, sometimes you get fed up and it has to stop one day.

“Things change when you work hard and our guys work hard.

“We did a huge amount of work and to play so poorly in the first half, it’s like we weren’t punished as badly as we could have been in the first half.

“But look, there was a lot of frustration, but we pulled ourselves together in the second half and our big guys held on.

“You get there by working hard and we worked very hard over a long period of time.

“Sometimes it’s just too much, we have to react, we have to give our fans a reason to celebrate. We can’t disappoint them again.”

Lohan was well aware of the man label that had been stuck to his team after losing at this stage in the previous two years – and after losing to Limerick last month for the third time in a row in the Munster final.

“I guess there’s a pressure associated with that,” Lohan mused.

“You don’t want to be the guy or the team that’s close all the time. So there’s pressure, but you have to know how to handle it.

“You can’t get too excited about it, you still have to make good decisions and try to do what you do well and try to make good decisions with the ball. We just didn’t do that. We probably weren’t allowed to do that.”

“But look, the game is over 70 minutes, not over 35 minutes and you have the opportunity to reset everything and change things, and we did that and our players responded, and we’re delighted with our players.”

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