Hayes revels in Clare 'dream'

Clare goalkeeper Joe Hayes says Saturday's 2-12 to 1-09 All-Ireland SFC qualifier victory over Roscommon was "a dream turned into reality".

The Banner County booked a quarter-final meeting with Kerry next Sunday with the six-point win over the Rossies at Salthill.

"You can see the support for the team after the game, it's days like this you play football for," Hayes told Newstalk’s Off The Ball programme.

"It means everything. I said it before the game that these are the days you dream of and now we're here. Dreams can turn into reality.

"We had a super first half and I suppose we lost Cathal [O'Connor] early in the second half which is unfortunate. We lost possession and conceded the goal, but when the boys needed to go down the other end of the pitch and kick points they did it.

"There were a few dodgy moments and we made life uncomfortable for ourselves but we can work on all that during the week. That won't affect how happy we are at the moment."

Roscommon joint-manager Kevin McStay refused to blame the six-day turnaround following the Connacht final replay defeat to Galway last weekend, and insisted his Division 1 side should have been a match for the Division 3 champions.

"We were not up for it. The six days is obvious, you know the stats. It is a very tough one to manage. If we were going to rise," McStay told the Irish Independent.

"I thought we’d be the match of Clare. Six-day turnaround and going to play Dublin or Kerry or someone you’d be up against it. It was Clare we were playing coming from Division 3 and we are Division 1 and we felt we’d match them but the evidence didn’t match up.

"We had said to them, ‘you’ll think you are going nicely until you get a sucker punch and it’s how you react to that’, but then they put another goal on top of it. That really made a gap and we couldn't react to it. We didn’t have it in us today."