Hang-ups gone, Limerick are ready for odyssey

I met a man on Wednesday night mad keen to chat about the old days with Clare, good and bad. Inevitably, the bad came first. “God, 1993 was some total disaster,” he said. “The hiding we got from Tipperary was something savage.”

I held my counsel for a few seconds before responding. Nearly everybody who recalls that 1993 season returns to our Munster final collapse, conveniently forgetting how we got there. We beat Limerick in Ennis before taking down Cork in the Gaelic Grounds.

Clare hadn’t beaten Cork in the championship in 12 years. We hadn’t won a championship match since beating Waterford by two points in 1988. Our next three championship defeats were by an aggregate margin of 45 points. I was involved in two of them.