Clare joint-manager Gerry O'Connor has urged his players to forget about their Munster triumph and to put everything into reaching the ESB All-Ireland MHC final.

Speaking ahead of tomorrow's All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin, O'Connor said: "Our aim and goal at the start of the year was to reach a Munster final and to win a Munster final. However, the reality is that once we achieved that we called a meeting straight away and said to them 'right lads, that competition is over with now. We now have a new competition to concentrate on'.

"That's been our focus. That's the way we've approached it. We've said, 'right the Munster was one competition, we're now in the All-Ireland competition'. We want to do the best we possibly can in it, so it hasn't been hard to get the players grounded again.

"We have approached the year on a match by match basis and staying in the present the whole time. It hasn't changed because we won the Munster final - the next match is the All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin and that's all were thinking about."

O'Connor is refusing to underestimate a Dublin team that bounced back from a heavy Leinster final defeat by Kilkenny to oust Antrim in the All-Ireland quarter-final.

"When we played Limerick we were slight favourites and the perception in the county was that we should be able to beat Limerick handily enough - that same sort of perception is floating around the county at the moment about the Dublin game," O'Connor warned.

"Dublin were beaten easily enough in the Leinster final but if you analyse the Leinster final and we have in great detail, you'll see that Dublin are a very similar team to Limerick, a physically imposing team and all of them have played with Dublin Colleges, so they're going to be no pushover.

"If you analyse the Dublin v Kilkenny minor final in detail, you'll see that Dublin matched Kilkenny everywhere but on the scoreboard. They out-fielded them and out-fought them, they were a far bigger and more physical team but they just couldn't score.

"However, they seem to have rectified that. They brought in a young under 16, a fella called Cormac Costello, who came in for the Antrim game up in Crossmaglen and scored 2-1. We were up at that game and know what they are capable of." Tweet

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