Clare and Limerick: The most visceral of rivalries

They’ve always had each other. When Clare produced their finest team in two decades to beat Cork and Tipperary in 1955, it was a young and unconsidered Limerick outfit, Mackey’s Greyhounds, who tripped them up in the Munster final on an afternoon of sub-Saharan heat on the Ennis Road. When Clare produced their next successful team two decades later, the bunch that won two National Leagues in the late 1970s, the big championship rivalry was with Cork but – all politics being local — the rivalry with Limerick wasn’t far behind.

And when the Banner eventually got around to winning All-Irelands under a certain gentleman from Feakle, it was Limerick who stood in their way. First at Semple Stadium in the 1995 Munster final, when the walls at last came tumbling down, and then the following year at the Gaelic Grounds on another boiling Ennis Road day: Ciarán Carey and all that.

They’ve always had each other and they always will. Green and white, saffron and blue. Limerick 34 championship wins, Clare 16, one draw. It is among the most immediate, the most visceral of GAA rivalries. And the most geographically unavoidable; when Clare people head to a Munster championship match they have to cross the Shannon.