Out of the darkness, into the light
And it was no classic, no fireworks display, but a tight, joyless, low-scoring final. Clare 1-16 Cork 0-17, something like that.
How would we have acclaimed them then?
We would have acclaimed them all right. We would have sung hosannas to the maturity and poise of a bunch so young. We would have lavished praise on their manager for bringing them from defeat in the qualifiers last year to the Hogan Stand podium this year. We would have said the final itself may not have been pretty but promptly added that most All-Ireland victories aren’t and absolved them on grounds of their youth. We would have predicted even bigger and better things from them in the future. And we would have been fair, measured and correct on every count.
One slight problem. What do we now say about a team that won the All Ireland the way Clare did?
Better still, as a match it was superior to the drawn game. A finer contest, more evenly balanced. For ceaseless, unapologetic physicality, it didn’t equal the industrial hardcore of Kilkenny/Tipperary in 2009 — and it was all the more enjoyable for it. Instead of wailing guitars and the relentless rat-tat-tat-tat of drums we were uplifted with crescendos of violins at every turn.
But midway through the third quarter the strings fell silent and there came a juncture when the issue wasn’t about Clare’s skills. It wasn’t about what was in their wrists. It was about what was in their hearts and in their minds and in their souls.
The winners had collapsed as an attacking entity. They went 17 minutes without a score after Tony Kelly’s point moments after the resumption. Cork hit five unanswered points to range up alongside their opponents.
For the first time over the course of the two games, the little things were breaking the wrong way for Clare. This was their dark night of the soul, the moment of crisis before the resolution. Had they lost their way, as a bunch so young were perfectly entitled to do, nobody could possibly have blamed them.
They didn’t. Come the hour, cometh the young men. Loads of them.
Shane O’Donnell landed a point and the sigh of relief could be heard back in Ennis. John Conlon and Colin Ryan followed up with scores and suddenly the Banner were out of the darkness and back into the light. Not as a result of their skill but as a result of their mental strength, their fortitude and their patience in riding out the storm.
How many times during the saga did they make what looked at the time like a match-winning break?
Let’s count.
In the first half-hour of the drawn game. In the second quarter of the drawn game. In the first 25 minutes on Saturday. In the nine-minute second-half sequence that yielded them 1-4, beginning with O’Donnell’s point and continuing with McGrath’s bullet of a goal. And where Domhnall O’Donovan had saved the day in injury-time three weeks ago, Darach Honan sealed the day in injury-time here.
They played My Lovely Rose of Clareover the PA afterwards. They might equally have played Chumbawamba. ‘I get knocked down, but I get up again’.
Never mind the wristiness, it is this resilience that will be one of Clare’s most critical qualities in the coming years. There will be disappointments along the way. There will be unforeseen defeats. But not only are they young enough to recover, they’re smart enough to learn as they go along.
Certainly Pat Donnellan’s speech — articulate, thoughtful, generous — hinted as much. His line about how Clare intended to be back in Croke Park many times in the future will not have gone unheard in other counties. One can gorge on victory, as Cody’s Kilkenny have proved over and over again, without becoming sated. It’s not about what’s in the stomach but in the head.
The most promising Clare team in history and they are years ahead of schedule, with Donnellan putting one in mind of Anthony Daly back in the day. On which point, do breakthrough teams from less successful counties need to be captained and crewed by inordinately intelligent young men — inordinately intelligent because they’re better able to process the requirements and sacrifices the task entails. There’s a potential MA thesis in there somewhere.
The one mild criticism one can make of the new champions is the concession of six goals in two matches to a side that had scored only one in their previous four. If there’s one thing that would enhance them next year it’s the addition of a subtly psychotic corner-back. Because Clare cannot keep getting themselves into shoot-outs — sooner or later, bang bang, you’re dead.
One doesn’t foresee the manager going anywhere anytime soon. Five years ago Davy Fitz oversaw the most humiliating All-Ireland defeat of modern times: Kilkenny 3-30 Waterford 1-13. On Saturday he oversaw the most exhilarating All-Ireland victory of modern times.
Only he will know how many hours of soul searching, of self-examination, of plotting and planning it took to get from there to here. Best of all, and contrary to the fears of so many within the county, he did so with a troupe of all-singing, all-dancing moppets as opposed to a bunch of soulless, joyless robots programmed up to the eyeballs by their simultaneously manic yet calculating overlord.
Cork? There was something of the vampire about them on both days. Just no killing them off until Van Helsing Honan went to work with his stake in injury-time.
For the losers still to be within hailing distance at that stage, having led for only a couple of the 140 minutes and trailed for most of it, was nothing but admirable.
If JBM’s lads didn’t perform in the drawn game they punched their weight on Saturday, with Pa Cronin’s presence under the high ball giving them purchase up front. In a sense the very disparity in talent between the two teams rendered Cork’s doggedness all the more commendable.
But this was a day when some chickens came home to roost. This was a day when Cork’s lack of under-age success returned to bite them in the backside. Yes, we know that under-age success does not guarantee adult silverware. But can we agree that under-age success at least enhances the prospect of it? And that it does so by increasing the depth and quality of the pool from which the manager of the county seniors is obliged to fish?
The better team by a distance won on Saturday. The team from the county that’s been reaching and winning All Ireland under-age finals.
Therein lies the difference and the lesson.
