Anthony Daly: Even fine details may not separate Sars and Na Fianna

Na Fianna and Sarsfields, two teams full of pace and skill, are suited to Croke Park plus in Liam Gordon, there's an official who will let the game flow. The All-Ireland club hurling final should be a quality match. 

KEY ROLE: Bryan Murphy will probably be the Sarsfields man assigned to shackle Donal Burke in the All-Ireland club SHC final. Picture: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

When I was Clare manager in 2005, we went on a training camp to the Algarve in Portugal for five days before the championship. It was a brilliant exercise, one that stood to us when we should have won that year’s All-Ireland, but one of the highlights of the camp was a seven-a-side hurling tournament I organised in the middle of the week.

I tried to mix up the teams as evenly and fairly as I could but I was having the craic too. One of the sides was an amalgamation between Clarecastle and Eire Óg, which I called Dalcassians. In 1928, Ennis Dalcassians won a county title with seven Clarecastle fellas on board. Ennis Dals won eight county titles before the club morphed into Éire Óg but Clarecastle still laid claim to that title, which was our first, and which the record books still show.