Classic Clare performance catches Tipp off-guard

IT was like the moment when you pick a CD you loved in the trendy days of your youth off the shelf. The Unforgettable Fire, perhaps, or The Queen Is Dead.

“This was something else in its day,” you think. “God knows what it sounds like now. It’s not going to be the same at all at all.” But you’re wrong. It’s a classic. It sounds even better.

Or when you notice that tonight’s television movie is something which knocked you out when you were a hormonal teenager high on popcorn and the prospect of double seats in the local cinema. Platoon or Witness maybe.

Back then you thought it was the greatest film ever made but you’re prepared to be disappointed. Wrong again, it’s a really good film and made even better by the fact that you don’t have to thumb home in the rain afterwards.

Clare’s demolition of Tipperary at Páirc Uí Chaoimh yesterday gave you the same sort of warm feeling, the kind you get when you realise that something you’d consigned to the past can still resonate today.

In the last three years we’ve stopped expecting the rip roaring death-or-glory we-eat-raw-steak for breakfast variety of Banner performance. They still earned the respect due to a good side but people had begun to think of the displays they gave between 1995 and 1999 in purely nostalgic terms.

Imagine a team that played with such conviction, such passion, such determination not to let any ball go uncontested. Pity we’d never see Clare do the likes of it again. That intensity wouldn’t be recaptured.

Well, it turns out that the classic Clare display was placed in the GAA Museum a few years too early. It’s also apparent that Ger Loughnane isn’t the only manager who can elicit this kind of tour de force. Yesterday at Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Cyril Lyons, a man who is to diffidence what Loughnane is to flamboyance, showed he’s just as capable of rousing Clare to that fever pitch which has been so uniquely theirs in recent hurling history. Kilkenny may be more talented and Offaly have been more stylish, but there’s something about the full-on Banner special which is particularly dispiriting for its victims.

Underlining the old school quality of the victory was the fact Clare’s star performers were much the same as they would have been five or six years ago when a display like this was the rule rather than the exception. You had

Brian Lohan flawless and commanding at full-back, Brian Quinn buccaneering in the corner, Sean McMahon imperious and impassable at centre half-back,

Colin Lynch running the opposition to a standstill at midfield and sniping points, Jamesie O’Connor and Niall Gilligan grabbing vital scores and, just as importantly, never allowing the opposition defenders time to get in a decent clearance.

There were some fine contributions from the relative neophytes, notably Diarmuid McMahon whose ball-winning ability and energy around midfield suggested classic period Ollie Baker, but the victory was largely built on the performances of players who are not so much wily old foxes as dogs of war for the hard road.

The tenor of this performance was gloriously familiar for the Clare faithful who could have been forgiven for thinking they were watching a re-enactment of the 1999 Munster Championship

semi-final replay. Once more Clare were infinitely better attuned to the game from the start, got the early scores and built on their lead as a listless Tipp team failed to produce anything resembling a fight back.

The harrying of players, the blocking down of clearances, the clear physical superiority were all reminiscent of that day. The big difference is that Tipperary had a young and inexperienced team four years ago, one which could be excused for wilting under the challenge posed by more battle hardened opposition.

This time, Tipp went into the game as second favourites for the All-Ireland with most of the side which won the Liam McCarthy Cup just two years ago. In those circumstances the poverty of their response is harder to excuse.

There will be suggestions Tipperary under-estimated Clare. But last year’s Munster final seemed the ultimate lesson in not taking teams lightly in the championship. If Tipp have made the same mistake less than a year later, they must possess boundless reserves of over-confidence.

The explanation may be that the significance of Tipperary’s good league form was hugely over-estimated while Clare’s run to last year’s All-Ireland final was too easily forgotten.

The one cloud for Lyons will be the sending off of Sean McMahon after a silly flare-up in the middle of the pitch. The possibility of a potentially season destroying suspension may mute their excitement somewhat.

But they’ll celebrate all the same. By the end, with Banner forwards waltzing through the middle and only being denied by goals by the acrobatics of Brendan Cummins while Tipp players looked on bemused, it was all a bit 1993.

When Alan Markham swerved over an extravagant point to close out Clare’s account, he didn’t laugh at Tipperary. But a smile musn’t have been too far away.