Clare holding all the aces

UNDER-21 HURLING:THIS CLARE under-21 team has already denied Tipperary a clean sweep of Munster hurling titles this season and they won't want to undo all that hard work here by slipping up against outsiders Antrim. Antrim put up big scores against Armagh and Derry to land their fourth consecutive Ulster title, with captain Conor McCann and Kevin McKiernan leading the scoring charge. There is however the lingering memory of last year, when they lost at this stage, 2-23 to 0-6, at the hands of Dublin.

Clare’s win over Tipperary gave them only a second ever Munster title and a first since 2009. They’ll see room for improvement too as they were trailing 0-16 to 1-14 in injury time to Tipp before Cathal McInerney offloaded to former minor star Niall Arthur who got the all-important late, late goal.

Clare are a talented outfit and roving corner forward Cathal O’Connell, classy wing forward Tony Kelly and Conor McGrath will prove a handful for the Ulster champions. Of their Munster campaign team captain Patrick O’Connor said: “We kind of cantered home against Waterford but Tipperary proved a very stiff test and we really got to see where our strengths and weaknesses were in that game.”

They have too much strength and too little weakness to give Antrim much of a chance.

CLARE: R Taaffe; P Flanagan, D McInerney, K Ryan; S Morey, C Ryan, P O’Connor; C Galvin, S Golden; T Kelly, P Collins, A Cunningham; C O’Connell, C McGrath, C McInerney.

ANTRIM: J O'Mullan; R McCloskey, R Gillan, C Morgan; J Black, M Donnelly, J McCouaig; A McKeown, S McAfee; M Devlin, S Dobbin, K McKiernan; N Elliot, C McCann, D McCloskey.