Long-distance dreams

It seems an odd one at first.

The idea of Liam McHale coming down from Mayo three times a week. Stopping off in Ballindine first for a cup of coffee in his old buddy Seamus Gallagher’s shop and garage. Then taking a further pit stop in Clarenbridge, letting his fellow selector James Foran take the wheel for the rest of the way into Ennis because his own back can only take so much of the driving.

But then, when you think some more, there’s a logic to it. Twenty years earlier it was also to Mayo that Clare football turned. They had been the whipping boys of Munster before John Maughan whipped them into shape and a unit that in the summer of 1992 would humble the mighty Jack O’Shea into retirement and with it change forever the way GAA teams prepared and viewed themselves.