The 2019 Clare senior hurling panel have expressed their frustration at not being consulted on the managerial selection process.

Louis Mulqueen is now considered the front-runner for the Clare senior hurling manager's position after outgoing co-boss Donal Moloney pulled out of the race today.

Two-time All-Ireland winning Clare selector Tony Considine believes the Banner County would be well served by mirroring Cork’s progressive approach and filling their various management teams with the men who twice delivered Liam MacCarthy glory in the mid-’90s.

Although Moloney — joint manager with Gerry O’Connor last year — was invited to put his name forward, county chairman Joe Cooney confirmed that officials were also exploring alternatives to the Scarriff man taking sole charge of the team in 2020.

First called up to the senior panel by Davy Fitzgerald in 2012, Duggan will fly to Melbourne in November and plans to stay there for a year, as he confirmed to The Clare Echo.

Clare hurling joint-managers Donal Moloney and Gerry O’Connor are considering seeking a fourth year at the helm, according to Banner County board chairman Joe Cooney, while football boss Colm Collins is to remain in charge for a seventh year.

Sport makes grown adults do silly things. Hurling sillier. Its frenzied nature plays on your most basic fears.

Championship conversations by Michael Moynihan

Michael Moynihan in scoreboard Fortresses overthrown and fortresses restored. Yesterday in Ennis was Bloomsday, of course, but was there a whiff of Tolkien to the proceedings, with the hills and hosts and stone fastnesses, waiting to be cast down or held in the face of assault?

Clare joint-manager Donal Moloney hit out after yesterday’s game at the criticism levelled at the Banner players after recent defeats in the Munster Championship.

That Clare are no longer in control of their own destiny is as much as they deserve following back-to-back no-shows, joint-manager Donal Moloney has admitted.

For our purposes this game should have been played at High Noon, because all week we were hearing that this would be a western classic.

Hurling again dominated proceedings last weekend. Not for the last time this season the incredible spectacle of the sport was there for all to see.

The Clare roar was nowhere to be heard yesterday as the relative silence of Cusack Park in the second half was eventually broken by chants of “Tipp, Tipp, Tipp”.

The first time a drop of alcohol passed my lips was on June 22, 1986.

Ian Galvin has returned to contact training giving Clare joint managers Donal Moloney and Gerry O’Connor an extra option in attack for Sunday’s Munster senior hurling championship tie with Tipperary in Cusack Park.

On the de facto opening Championship weekend, Greg Kennedy provided a whopper.

Such was the good form of Donal Moloney at the finish that the Clare joint-manager even had time for a parting joke.

We are a week into Munster Championship Lent. The 40 days and 40 nights before the start of the Munster SHC on May 12 commenced last Tuesday.

On the weekend that the Allianz Hurling League teams sit their opening exams, our headmaster assesses the best and worst boys in the class so far.

My last game as an inter-county manager with Dublin was our 2014 All-Ireland quarter-final defeat to Tipperary. I drove from Clare, picked up Tommy Dunne in Nenagh and met the squad in the Curragh.

Clare legend Anthony Daly says the decision to grant Waterford home advantage for their Munster SHC games this summer has blown the provincial championship “wide open”.

Donal Moloney has seen a lot of hurling in his time, but yesterday in Cusack Park represented something of a first for him.

After exchanging a few heated words with the Clare sideline in the closing minutes, John Kiely was a model of diplomacy and even bonhomie upon Paud O’Dwyer’s final whistle.

Yesterday in Cusack Park was a pick ‘n’ mix of everything the league can give you. High scores and stirring comebacks, spectacular goals, and lapses in concentration. Something for everyone in the audience.

To give an idea of just how glaring Clare’s concession of 15 pointed frees (24 in total) was on Saturday night, it’s one less than the placed balls that have been scored against Limerick across the first three rounds.

For those spilling out of Páirc Uí Rinn as the rain closed in on Saturday evening, one question dominated conversations.

John Fogarty on the biggest motions to go under the microscope at the GAA's annual congress.

The GAA’s plans to relax rules governing the use of their property on foot of last year’s Liam Miller tribute controversy in Páirc Uí Chaoimh do not extend to club grounds.

Clare co-manager Gerry O’Connor doubts that Tony Kelly’s red card last Saturday week would be shown in the Championship.

When we won the All-Ireland with Clare in 1995, the following year’s league kicked off that October. The celebrations obviously took their toll early in the campaign. We lost our first match to Kerry but the bank of fitness we’d built up stood to us as October segued into November. We went up to Birr and put on an exhibition against Offaly in our last match before the winter-break.

Every year, the confirmed Fitzgibbon Cup panels read more and more like a who’s who of the inter-county game. Hurling is as much a student’s game these days as a young man’s one. So among our ones to watch in this year’s competition (which begins Sunday) there will be familiar names but to a man, they have points to prove.

Clare joint manager Donal Moloney believes the experience of last summer will stand to teams as they plot their way for 2019 — though he emphasised again the huge demand on resources on and off the field that the new format for the championship places.

Clare hurling joint manager Gerry O’Connor has identified a trio of national league games that he thinks will prime the Banner for a tilt at the Munster championship next summer.

Shane O’Donnell will be back in a Clare jersey far sooner than envisaged with confirmation that the 2013 All-Ireland final hero will be lining out for the Banner County in the Aer Lingus Fenway Hurling Classic in Boston on Sunday.

Peter Duggan never feared that Gerry O’Connor and Donal Moloney would be lost to the Clare senior hurlers over the off-season.

Páraic Fanning could be named as the new Waterford senior hurling manager later this week, although influential figures have not yet given up of Mattie Kenny taking the reins.

Galway hanging on by the skin of their teeth at Semple Stadium on Sunday went against a summer where eight, nine and even 11-point leads have been routinely wiped out.

Some hurling matches resonate far more than others, with a draw doubly eloquent.

Over half a century ago Harold MacMillan reduced all of politics to those four words. Even now it’ll have to do as a description of Galway-Clare on Saturday evening.

Éamonn Fitzmaurice shipped some criticism last week when he reintroduced Paul Geaney against Monaghan after a disappointing initial foray for the Dingle man.

Best of the breeds after gap of more than quarter of a century in Carbery’s Cork Beef Bull Championship

Enda McEvoy look at the key takeaways from the weekend's action...

First All-Ireland quarter-final win in five years. First time heading back to Croke Park in five years. Redemption for a Munster final that didn’t go to plan. Visible progress — at long, long last.