Banner primed to bounce back

A YEAR ago, Waterford defied all expectations by handing Clare a drubbing a week after flopping in the league final.

Brian Lohan will be hoping the Banner can use the same template this Sunday against Tipperary.

It’s a month now since Anthony Daly’s side turned up for the 2005 NHL decider against Kilkenny with a strong run of form providing plenty of wind in their sails. By the end of the afternoon the spring had left their step as they processed the damage done by a 14-point defeat.

Suddenly all those earlier impressive wins against Kilkenny, Waterford, Tipp, Cork and Wexford had lost most of their value. That’s how it felt to them anyhow.

“We had a good league run, I suppose, up until the final,” said Lohan. “You don’t really remember the matches beforehand, though, when you get such a drubbing in the final. They just upped the pace after half-time and we weren’t able to respond.

“We thought we were in a good situation going into the game but, as it turned out, it went as wrong as it could do.

“We’ve just had to go back to the drawing board and see what we can learn from it.”

It’s easy now to forget the momentum Clare had built up before that drubbing in Thurles. After a season looking to fit square pegs into round holes, Daly decided this year that it was time for men like Frank Lohan to be detailed for duties that best suited them.

New faces like Barry O’Connell in midfield and Barry Nugent on the wing seemed to have auditioned successfully for a spot centre-stage come summer, leaving the team with a settled and contented look to it.

“We thought we had a settled team and then we got a drubbing like that,” Lohan countered. “That raises a whole load more questions. You just don’t know until the championship and the pace is upped. We’ve just had to go back to the drawing board and see what we can learn from it.”

To back up his point about the league, the Wolfe Tones centre-back points to their surprise win over Kilkenny in March of this year, a result that catapulted their season forward after some worrying earlier displays.

“I don’t think Kilkenny were that tuned in for that game. They were a little bit all over the place that day and if you look at the personnel as well for them, it was a lot different the day they togged out for the league final.

"You couldn’t really read too much into the first game we played.” Lohan doesn’t leave it there either. He could point to any number of league games where results served to hide or obscure the true picture for the teams involved.

One of those was Clare’s eight-point win over Cork at the end of April last year. With five minutes to go, Clare were actually seven points down. “It was just a pure freak result that we beat them but we didn’t read anything into it.”

Everyone else did, however, and by the time they squared up to Waterford three weeks later in Thurles the sheer volume of optimism in the county couldn’t help but infect some of their own thinking.

“Maybe last year we got sucked into believing some of the things that people were saying about us and they were starting to say it again coming up to the league final this year. They’re definitely not saying it now so we’ll have no excuses going into the championship.

“Waterford played so poorly on the day (of last year’s final against Galway) and they looked so disinterested and we were all watching thinking, ‘God, they don’t seem to be at the pace of it at all.’

“We got sucked in, we shouldn’t have but we did. Fair play to Waterford, they exposed us when they got the chance. They got a run at us and they destroyed us.”

This year, the vibes may be very different for Clare but the danger remains the same. Tipperary may not have matched Waterford’s levels these past three seasons, but with two tight games against Limerick in the bag they will hold a significant edge over their neighbours, who have effectively been in cold storage for almost a month.

Just as important, maybe, is how Clare have dragged themselves off the floor since the trauma of being so far off the pace against Kilkenny. Lohan isn’t the kind of guy to paint things in sweetness and light, but you get the feeling he himself is just as intrigued as to how Clare will respond this weekend as the rest of us.

“Fellas were obviously disappointed after the final, but it was a case of what can you do about it? It’s over now and we’ll see how we can respond. We’ll have had a month before we’re out in the championship and we’ll take it from there.”