A POWERFUL second-half display saw Clare claim a first ESB Munster minor hurling championship crown since 1989 at Semple Stadium yesterday.

A POINT on the call of full-time in extra-time by Paudric O’Mahony earned Waterford a draw in this throbbing, absorbing ESB Munster MHC semi-final at Pairc Ui Chaoimh on Saturday night.

WATERFORD will include five of the team which won last year’s Munster MHC for tonight’s semi-final against Cork in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

ON A night when the Waterford County Board unanimously ratified the appointment of two new county senior hurling selectors for 2010, team manager Davy Fitzgerald blasted those people – many of them within his own native Clare – who, he claims, have an agenda designed to try and knock him at every given opportunity.

I’M going to start this analysis not with the senior final – by which I wasn’t at all impressed, and more on that later – but with the minor game.