Write us off at your peril!
Think back to the fall-out which greeted their heavy defeat by Kilkenny in the League final and again after something of a 'no-show' against Tipperary in the Munster semi-final.
Selector and former star midfielder Alan Cunningham provides a simple enough explanation. In essence, apart from the negative aspects of these two particular games, their team did enough in their other engagements to show that they could be just as serious contenders for the title as any of the other top teams.
"The lambasting we got... we're kind of well used to it at the moment. It's coming from all sides. We're all used to getting slated,'' he says. "We don't have much of a problem when it's about hurling and we can make mistakes in terms of selection or tactics. You take it on the chin and move on. But, when it's beyond and above that it can be annoying.
"To be fair to everybody, anyone who saw our performance in Nowlan Park in the League and in Dungarvan would be very slow to write us off and write off the older fellows. I know people might say it was only the League, but they were two serious performances.
"Against Galway in Cusack Park we played very poorly, but we had been doing extremely hard stamina work at the time. We slackened off for a while and did a bit more hurling leading up to the Kilkenny and Waterford games and it seemed to tell for us.''
Cunningham, who coached the Wolfe Tones team which contested the 1996 All-Ireland club final agrees that they wouldn't have got this far without the 'senior' players once more inspiring them, on and off the field.
He could also have speculated on what Clare will be like when Davy Fitzgerald, the Lohans, Sean McMahon and Colin Lynch move on, but he didn't need to. That's fairly obvious.
"I don't think people really understand it. Their influence is absolutely enormous - not just in terms of their own performance on the field - but their influence off the field, during training sessions,'' he said.
The management learned a lot from last year's campaign, which culminated in a quarter-final defeat at the hands of Kilkenny in a replay. So did the players. The end result was that it stimulated a belief that they could put it to good use this season. And to a large extent, they have managed that.
Even in defeat, they took "a lot of positives" from their display against Kilkenny in the League decider, Cunningham says.
"We felt we held them in the first half and seemed to be there or thereabouts at half time. The second half collapse was something we have looked at seriously since. The loss of Frank Lohan had a huge impact on the game because at the time he was negating Henry Shefflin. Once he went off, unfortunately the floodgates started to open up and Kilkenny got a run at us.
"We also took a lot of positives from our championship game with Tipperary. We created a huge amount of (goal) chances in that game. It was hard to explain, but on the back of what happened to us last year in the first round of the championship (against Waterford) I honestly feel that if we got one or two of those goals in the first half it could have been a different game.''
Having watched Wexford in the Leinster final, they were optimistic about their chances of beating them, based on how they believed Wexford would play and the way they were going to approach the quarter-final. Either way, their confidence level was "fairly high," having met them in the League and on the way the season had gone for them.
They always knew that their round robin game against Waterford would be crucial, for the reason that it had been "a bit of struggle" to get the team back on the road following the defeat to Tipp. To win then was the perfect boost going up to Croke Park.
Cork will present a different type of challenge, he agrees, because they know exactly what they are up against.
"You have to give Cork credit. They have had their ups and downs, no doubt about that, but they could very well be going for three-in-a-row.''
Acknowledging Cork's difficulties at half-forward the last day, Cunningham anticipates something of a backlash.
"There's going to be a kick in them this time. They're going to be very dangerous,'' he explained.
For all the respect he has for the champions and the confidence they have in their own team, he points out that very often it's the "small things" in a game which can make all the difference.
Cunningham also takes encouragement from the belief that on a given day, any of the top six or seven teams is capable of beating the odds. And he thinks Clare are one of them.
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