Trials, targets, and transitions
At the end of June 2017, I found myself in familiar territory, back in Cusack Park for a knockout championship match, positioned on the other side of the trenches, facing down my own crowd, writes Anthony Daly
I’d been there before in 2012 when Dublin arrived in town for a qualifier. I had a Limerick tracksuit on my back the second time around but there was less focus on me because I was coaching the Limerick minors.
Limerick had a good team. They’d beaten Waterford convincingly in the previous game. They were fancied to beat Clare but I knew all too well the perils of trying to secure a result in the Park. The weather was desperate. The sky was nearly dark by the time the game finished. Both sides went at it hard.
Neither team would back down before Clare narrowly won after extra-time.
Clare were hammered by Cork in the Munster final before being well beaten by Galway in the All-Ireland quarter-final. Clare have had better minor teams but I left Ennis that night seriously impressed by a handful of their players; Diarmuid Ryan, Cian Minogue, Riain Considine, Gary Cooney, and Aidan McCarthy. And it’s no surprise to me now that four of those five are on the Clare senior panel, with Cooney, Ryan, and McCarthy really impressing during the Munster League.
Limerick went into that 2017 minor semi-final with much more pedigree and expectation. Five of the starting team had played in the previous year’s All-Ireland minor final but Ronan Connolly is the only one of that 2017 side to yet taste senior action with Limerick.
That’s understandable given the huge volume of underage talent Limerick have rolled off the production line in recent years but the harvest Clare could yet reap from that 2017 side proves that’s what you should want off a minor team; three or four guys good enough to go to that next level.
I suppose we’ve always had the 1997 minor team to refer back to as a cautionary tale in Clare. That was the only All-Ireland minor title Clare ever won but, apart from John Reddan and Gearoid Considine, nobody else really made it.
Clare lost the only other minor final they’ve been in since, the 2010 decider against Kilkenny, but that side was packed with future inter-county seniors; Tony Kelly, Colm Galvin, Seadna Morey, David McInerney, Cathal Malone, Paul Flanagan, Podge Collins, Jamie Shanahan, Davy O’Halloran, Aaron Cunningham.
When I was Clare manager between 2004-06, many of the new generation who stepped up to take on the mantle from the older crew came off average underage teams. The 1999 minor team alone produced Tony Griffin, Tony Carmody, Diarmuid McMahon, Conor Plunkett, and Andrew Quinn.
Clare’s current senior squad is largely framed around the golden underage generation from 2009-14 but that was a freak that we have never seen the likes of in Clare, and may never see again. For years, we’d have given anything to win a first All-Ireland U21 title and then we won four in six years.
Sustaining that culture at senior level is the real trick. Liam Sheedy has 10 of last year’s All-Ireland U21-winning team on his senior squad but the Cork side they defeated in that final will still surely produce more senior inter-county players in the long-term.
That projected statistic is skewed by Cork having three established seniors — Mark Coleman, Darragh Fitzgibbon and Shane Kingston – on that team but Robbie O’Flynn, Jack O’Connor and Tim O’Mahony have already played championship and David Griffin, David Lowney and Conor O’Callaghan, who started in that U21 final, may see championship action this summer.
Liam will have time to bed in some of those talented young guys from that U21 team, especially Brian McGrath, Mark Kehoe, Cian Darcy, Jake Morris, Colin English and Ger Browne. Morris (who played championship last year), English and Kehoe played in the Munster League final against Clare two weeks ago but Liam will gradually introduce more of those young guys as the season progresses.
Although this is only Liam’s first of a three-year term, this is still a big season for him. Does he trust the old warriors, some of whom played under him during his first term, or does he start rebuilding the team with some of those younger guys?
I know what that kind of a dilemma feels like because I was in a similar kind of position when I first took over Clare in 2004. My sense of loyalty to many of the senior players back then is different to Liam’s situation now because I had soldiered alongside those guys as opposed to having managed them at underage and senior levels.
I think it’s only natural that you trust those guys, especially in year one. I introduced a plethora of new players throughout my three-year term but I still had some commentators constantly telling me that I needed to get rid of Seanie McMahon and Brian Lohan. The reasoning seemed to be was that I was stunting the long-term development of the team by still playing them in such pivotal positions but Lohan and Seanie were still the best numberthree andsix in the county at that time.
My opinion was I was charged with delivering the best Clare 15 for championship time.
Liam has more underage talent to draw on now than I had with Clare back then but he won’t be granted too much of a honeymoon period. Tipp have had two poor seasons in succession and their public think like the supporters of Man United and the All-Blacks; that stuff is not acceptable.
The Tipperary team from the Munster League final was packed with established players. Maybe Liam is trying to play more of a settled team during the spring — which is the opposite of what Michael Ryan did last year — to have a more settled championship team during the summer — which is the opposite of what Ryan had for last year’s championship. Yet if it all goes pear-shaped again, the rebuilding project will look a lot more difficult in 2020.
Context frames everything. The Munster League campaign highlighted how Clare are building again but the Munster round robin format is so absolutely unforgiveable that you can’t look beyond any one game. Donal Moloney and Gerry O’Connor have put in a savage effort to try and win another All-Ireland for Clare and, unless they do so in 2019, this will probably be their last year. That’s not putting on any pressure on the two lads but that seems to be the talk anyway around the county.
There is every chance that Clare will win the All-Ireland this year but I’d say the lads wouldn’t mind having a league title in the bag to copperfasten the huge progress they’ve made before going after Liam MacCarthy.
Being in Yearthree with Wexford now, does Davy Fitzgerald go out and try and win a league title before resetting his focus on trying to reach an All-Ireland semi-final? He will feel at this stage that Wexford are ready now to make that step up to the last four but it’s a big year for him and his players.
With no promotion or relegation in this year’s league, the same pressure to secure results will be absent from other seasons. Performances still count for something but some counties will still have zero interest in the league. I’d put Cork at the top of that list because all John Meyler wants from this spring is to find more players to strengthen his squad. But he won’t be the only manager thinking that way throughout this campaign, especially when Limerick showed the value of having a strong bench last year.
Tipp will be out to make a statement this evening after the trimming they got two weeks ago but it’s almost worthless for the time being to be making predictions and calling games. It’s still only January. We’re still in the silly season.
When I turned on the RTÉ news on Tuesday evening, I saw Conor O’Donovan, the former Tipperary hurler, speaking about illegal handpasses, and the blight it’s becoming on the game. For a second, I had to look again; I was wondering had Conor been converted by those dark football forces.
Conor, who was a full-back I always admired, may have a point, especially with the pace of the game now, but I hope referees don’t lose the run of themselves this weekend by trying to clamp down on those indiscretions. Put it this way, come All-Ireland semi-final or final day, referees won’t be giving frees for a suspected thrown ball.
I appreciate that we can’t be too complacent, or too arrogant to think that we can’t make hurling better, but I still think our product has never been more attractive. When you watch the game now, you can be guaranteed to see high quality, supreme skills and a sack-load of scores.
I don’t want to be bashing football this early in the season but I turned on the Armagh-Tyrone Dr McKenna Cup final last Saturday night for the craic.
Central Council had got rid of the controversial hand-pass rule that afternoon but I didn’t see any massively entertaining football. It was a gloried freetaking competition. I’d have turned it off only I was waiting to see if the game would erupt into a boxing match.
Our hurling product is certainly secure when compared to football anyway.
