Kieran Shannon: Sometimes it's not just about when you lose, but how you lose

Clare manager Colm Collins spikes to the media after their defeat to Mayo last weekend. Picture: Inpho/Laszlo Geczo

Last week, just days before Clare’s Division Two promotion playoff against Mayo, Fermanagh’s Seán Quigley paid a member of Colm Collins’ panel about the loftiest and loveliest compliment you can give an opponent.

In an interview that would have pleasantly appeased Tomás Ó Sé’s concern that current GAA players are now so loathe to express their true personalities, Quigley, as well as admitting “I’d rather be happy and healthy and able to go about my daily business than beating myself up about carrying half a stone”, talked colourfully about the two markers, both called Kevin, that he identified as the toughest he’d encountered.

That the identity of the first was straight from the bear-pit that’s the Ulster championship, and Quigley’s own debut in it, was hardly a surprise; by Quigley’s own admission, Kevin McCloy, the former All Star from Derry, “completely scared the sh*t out of me” before his championship debut in 2011. But instead of then selecting some hateful, trash-talking corner or full back from Tyrone or Donegal or indeed Dublin as he memorably did in an All Ireland quarter-final in 2015, he opted for “a fella from Clare” who “wouldn’t be a household name”.

“We would’ve played Clare a lot [in the league] over the years [and Kevin Hartnett] was absolutely horrible to mark,” he told Katrina Brennan in last week’s edition of Gaelic Life. “I used to hate to see him coming. But he was such a nice person, there was no nastiness or anything to him.

“You could be marking players and they’d be mouthing at you and all but he was a really good fella. But Jesus Christ, if you went to the toilet he’d be in beside you! He’d just go everywhere with you. He used to sicken me and if we were going down the road to Ennis, I’d be thinking, ‘Jesus, this boy is going to be stuck to me for the next 70 minutes!’ And it wouldn’t [have been] so bad if he was hateful. But he was 100 percent, so you couldn’t tell him to f**k away off. But I used to hate marking him! A damn good footballer, great defender but a nice fella too.”

If Hartnett is an on-field extension of the personality of his manager whose own virtues have been detailed in these pages, then their collective fightback against Mayo likewise epitomised just what a defiant and honest group they are.

At halftime they trailed by 11 points to a rampant Mayo side who were illustrating that at the very least they intend to contest their 10th All Ireland semi-final in 11 years later this summer. Clare were in danger of being mere roadkill, much like Galway and even defending All Ireland champions Donegal became in 2013 when they caught a James Horan team in much the same mood as they were in the first half in Ennis.

It’s a scenario all sides encounter at some stage and John Hayes wrote about it in his autobiography, The Bull. The temptation is to tank, to give up, the result obviously being beyond you, but for Hayes you’ve to always play for something beyond the result.

“You have to hang in. No matter how bad things are in a match, you have to hang in and keep going. In rugby you can get humiliated very quickly if you let your heads drop. But you can’t let it drop because you have to hold onto your self-respect as a team at all costs.”

Paris in 2006 was as good an example as he or anyone could find. Ten minutes into the second half Ireland were 43-3 down, having conceded six tries. “It was embarrassing, a desperate state of affairs. Our credibility as a team was on the line. We could have been a laughing stock. But we kept going.”

By the end France were just hanging on, their tongues hanging out. Instead of losing by something like 60-10, Ireland only lost by 43-31. They hadn’t won but their Parisian rally was the winning of the Triple Crown they’d subsequently – consequently – go on to win, only the second Ireland had claimed in a 21-year span.

“That last half-hour in Paris was vital to us as a team,” Hayes would reflect. “We salvaged our pride. If we had collapsed completely, the bottom could’ve fallen out of our whole season and had serious implications for the management team. Even when a game looks dead and buried, there can be a lot riding on how you respond as a team.”

Brian Cody has preached a similar gospel in light of where his team found themselves in games against Galway in 2005 and 2012. When in the former his defence sans Noel Hickey were raided for three Niall Hayes’s goals in an All Ireland semi-final, Cody, as he’d admit in his autobiography, found himself looking up at the scoreboard and imagining how it could look at the end. “‘At this rate,’ I thought, ‘Galway will win by 20 points! When last did Kilkenny lose a game by 20 points?! How will I explain that?’

What happened thereafter would make Cody “prouder of the panel than I had ever been over the previous six seasons”, in which time they’d won three All Irelands. After being “buried in a big hole”, Kilkenny would roar back from 11 down to lose by just three. While most onlookers had thought that match was the dying embers of a side who had contested three All Ireland finals in a row, Cody viewed it as the ignition of a side that would contest the next seven, winning six.

It’s no insult to Clare to say that they’ll struggle to contest one, let alone win any, of the next seven All Ireland football finals, but last Sunday Collins could echo the words of Cody: “The way the lads had fought back proved one thing – their spirit and resolve were still very much intact.”

It’s not the first time Clare have displayed such qualities. Two years ago they found themselves 1-13 to 0-4 down against Kerry with 20 minutes remaining in a Munster semi-final. While not quite a Milltown massacre a la 1979 was on the cards, a trouncing, like the one they endured in 2017 when they were beaten by 22 points in Killarney, was. But they rallied to outscore Peter Keane’s team 0-8 to 0-2 in those final 20 minutes in Ennis. Like Hayes would say, they hung in. Their pride and a season was salvaged; in the backdoor they would claim big wins in Carrick-on-Shannon and Mullingar and come within a point of making the Super 8s.

This season has been similarly rescued by how they outscored Mayo by 2-10 to 0-9 in the second half last Sunday. The only pity is that their next game is against Kerry, in Killarney, on Saturday week, and should they lose it, as almost everyone outside their group believes, there will be no backdoor for them like there was in 2019, or 2016 when they likewise lost to Kerry in Fitzgerald Stadium and regrouped to make the All Ireland quarter-finals.

Still, sometimes the measure of a team is not how far they progress in a championship and at what stage they are beaten, but the manner in which they were beaten. Yes, you were outscored, but did your spirit remain undefeated? Did you cave in or did you hang in?

In a year like this where is no second chance it will be an even more precious yardstick. So far Cavan’s response to being Ulster champions has been dismal, but can they redeem themselves when they face Tyrone in their first defence of that title? If they can’t remain Ulster champions, can they at least show some semblance as to why they were Ulster champions?

There’s a line from The Lion in Winter, referenced by Toby in the West Wing, where before two men are to be executed, Geoffrey scolds Richard. “Why, you chivalric fool – as if the way one fell down mattered!”

To which Richard replied, “When the fall is all there is, it matters.”

Over the coming weeks, with no safety net of a backdoor, it will matter a whole lot.