For Tipperary to win they must keep emotions in check

On the way home from Dublin last week, Niall Gilligan stopped off to break the journey in Francis Loughnane’s old pub in Roscrea, which is now run by John Carroll.

We were rekindling old stories from past battles between Clare and Tipp. Old soldiers stoking old embers in our collective souls trying to generate the heat again.

Niall and myself ran into John a couple of times against Tipp at the end of the 1990s. When Tipp finally took us down in 2000, he got an All-Star that season. John was the main man the night Tipp beat Clare in the 1999 Munster U21 final in Ennis when all hell broke loose afterwards.