Winning recipe from the ’70s

THERE is much talk this week of the last NHL Final meeting of Kilkenny and Clare in 1995 and how the Banner went on to win the All-Ireland championship, their first in over eight decades.

Nearly 20 years before that however, Clare had another outstanding team that could have made that championship breakthrough. They appeared in three National League finals in-a-row, 1976-78, wining the latter two.

It was their misfortune however, in the days when there was no championship back-door, to come up repeatedly against Cork, another side also in its pomp.

Justin McCarthy, well-known now as a kind of hurling messiah, was the catalyst, but central to their success in those heady days was a Feakle-man; no, not Ger Loughnane, though he was a star of the side, at wing-back, but Fr. Harry Bohan, a current selector. He recalls the reaction in the success-starved Banner to those National League wins.

“Clare hadn’t won a national title since the 1936 League so it was an incredible time.

“Obviously it wasn’t as big as 1995 - the All-Ireland Championship is everyone’s ultimate aim - but there was savage interest at the time with Clare people coming home from all over the world for the matches.

“That team also competed well in the championship. They reached the Munster final on two successive years, could have won both of them, but they were up against one of the best Cork teams of all time.

“A lot of the lads that hurled in ‘95 would tell you, that was the period that really inspired them.”

Like the team of ‘95, the team of the late 70’s was backboned by an outstanding half-back line, all three of whom - Loughnane, Sean Hehir, and Sean Stack - went on to make major contributions to Clare hurling, at club and county level.

They weren’t alone, however. “Johnny Callinan, Colm Honan, Pat O’Connor, Enda O’Connor and Seamus Durack also went into management.

“Most of them, in fact, seemed to have got involved afterwards, with club and county, and that’s hugely important.

“That’s what it’s really about, isn’t it? Guys who’ve played at a serious level themselves, seen some success, going back and putting it in with their clubs, giving the young lads a lead.”

And many of the 1995 side are now on the same path. Cyril Lyons and now Anthony Daly have gone on to manage Clare, while Ger “Sparrow” O’Loughlin, Jamesie O’Connor, and others, are involved at club level.

And the links don’t end there. Could it be that some of the highly-publicised Clare training methods of the 90’s were inspired from that earlier era?

“We trained savagely in the 70’s - all the things you hear about from the 90’s, morning training, on the beach - we did all that including training at 6am in the morning. In a way, that team, that scene, would be regarded as having seriously picked up Clare hurling, we began to believe in ourselves. “One of the challenges I faced when I took over was to get rid of that inferiority complex, and we did that. The momentum generated then was kept going through the 80’s; in 1981, we got to another Munster final, played well, it was there for the taking but Joe McKenna got three goals for Limerick.

“Seamus Durack had a good team in the mid-eighties but they were seriously unlucky again. What I find surprising is that it took so long to make the breakthrough, I think it could have come sooner. Obviously there was serious disappointment that the team of the 70’s didn’t do it, but the momentum was kept going all the time.

” The most significant legacy was that Clare began to believe they could be as good as the rest. Before that, if Clare had a setback, they went into the doldrums for a long time, but that didn’t happen, they stayed around.”

Only the very serious begrudgers would deny that, that Clare side deserved an All-Ireland title. Fr. Harry, a selector again with the current side, agrees with that sentiment. “Yeah, we had three or four savage years, but the unluckiest of all, I think, was the 1977 Munster final. We were absolutely flying against Cork, Noel Casey going to town on Martin Doherty and Enda going to town on John Horgan. Jim Power was put off just before half-time, and that affected us. I know you can make excuses, but I felt on the Thursday night before, in training, that we were really ready.

“That’s the way we played it that day in Thurles, then Jim was put off, and that was a terrible blow.”

Different circumstances this Monday, there isn’t quite the hunger that was there in the 70’s, but Clare, nevertheless, need this far more than Kilkenny. Without silverware since 1998, a National League now would do nicely.

“I know everyone says the League and championship are different, I’m tired of listening to it at this stage, you could nearly put it to music. Of course they’re different, we all know that, but the League is always worth winning. Kilkenny haven’t shirked away from it, nor have we, this year.

“Winning matches breeds confidence. Clare lost only one match, Kilkenny lost only one match and they’re the two teams in the final.

“I know the pace is different, but that’s nearly championship form, and I believe this game will be played at championship pace. I see Brian Cody has said that the team he’ll be picking is the team he’d be picking if this was a championship game, and the same applies to us.

“It should be a cracking game, and the fact that there are two colleges from the two counties in the All-Ireland final as well adds to it, that will be good for the young lads.”