‘I wouldn’t like to be facing Cork’

Former Clare star Jamesie O’Connor promises he won’t refrain from making the hard calls in his new role as a hurling analyst, writes Diarmuid O’Flynn

FORMER Clare star Jamesie O’Connor believes the county’s hurling manager Mike McNamara must do whatever needs to be done to bring back Gerry Quinn for the Munster championship.

Speaking at the launch of TV3’s coverage of this year’s All-Ireland championships, on which he is one of the hurling analysts, Jamesie pointed to Clare’s relegation from Division One this year as evidence that Quinn, an outstanding half-back, is badly needed by the Banner county.

“The league didn’t go well for Clare, a desperately disappointing campaign, everyone knows that, and relegation was a disaster,” he said.

“Mistakes were made, definitely, and the Gerry Quinn departure from the panel in controversial circumstances didn’t help. There were times during the league when the situation was crying out for the kind of leadership he could provide – the loss to Cork was an example of that.

“That game looked like it was won with 15 minutes to go, and had Clare beaten Cork, they would have stayed up and Cork would have been the team relegated. The last 15 minutes, Brian O’Connell (Clare captain) had been taken off, but when Clare needed that bit of leadership to just slow the thing down as Cork came back, there was no-one to do it. For Clare supporters, that was hugely disappointing.”

How much leeway, however, do you accord an experienced player, even if he is one of your best? “Listen, none of us here are privy to what exactly went on, but Gerry Quinn is a very experienced player, and you need those, especially given the fact that Frank Lohan is gone now, Colin Lynch also. Mike Mac doesn’t have the riches in numbers that Brian Cody has, or that Liam Sheedy has in Tipperary. Now I don’t know what went on between Gerry Quinn and Mike Mac, that’s a matter for them, but you’d like to think they could have found a way of mending the bridges. Clare would have a far better chance of living with either Cork or Tipp – whoever comes through – than they would without him.”

That will be on June 21, against the winners of Sunday’s Munster opener in Thurles, which gives Mike Mac and Gerry Quinn another month to work out their differences.

He wasn’t volunteering this advice, Jamesie, he’s not that kind of guy, wouldn’t dream under ordinary circumstances of telling anyone – much less a man he knows to be as independently minded as McNamara – what to do. He was merely answering the kind of awkward question he can anticipate on a more regular basis now that he’s put himself in the line of fire, the public face of TV3’s hurling championship coverage.

How does he handle such questions, how would he have handled – for instance – the events of Thurles a couple of years ago that became infamous as Semplegate, when several players from both Clare and Cork got entangled as they took the pitch?

“As honestly as you possibly can,” he says. “We’re not being paid to sit on the fence. If there’s a tough call to be made, I’ll make it, as honestly as I can. We’re not there to create controversy, we’re not there to sensationalise, we’re there to analyse what we see.

So, does he believe there’s actually too much emphasis on the sensational at the moment? “I think there is; I’m very conscious of the fact that it’s not too long ago that I was out there, training for six to eight months to go out and play in front of 40 or 50,000 people, then go to work again the next day. From that respect, I have huge empathy with the players.

“Of course fellas do stupid things in the heat of the moment, but having been there, I understand. If someone does something stupid, they know they’re going to be reading about themselves the following day – I don’t think we need to make a huge song and dance about it.”

And how does he expect Sunday’s Munster Championship clash to go? “There’s no way any team will be more motivated than Cork, after the stance they took earlier on in the season. These guys looked at their careers, and at one stage there was a question over whether any of them would ever wear the Cork jersey again, there seemed to be no sign of anything being resolved. Yet, they were prepared to make that sacrifice.

“I wouldn’t like to be facing Cork on Sunday, to be honest, coming up against the likes of John Gardiner, Ronan Curran, Seán Óg O hAilpín, the guys coming to the end of their careers, for whom time is running out. I think the Cork public will get solidly behind the team – we saw the reaction here last year when they got past Clare, then beat Galway.

“This team has given unbelievable entertainment to the Cork hurling supporters, there’s massive respect there for them amongst real Cork hurling people for what they’ve achieved, the great games they’ve pulled out of the fire, the manner in which they’ve conducted themselves.

“I look at guys like Ben and Jerry O’Connor, Joe Deane, Seán Óg – fantastic hurlers, tremendous people. They didn’t do what they did for the sake of controversy, they did it because they wanted to win. The county board acted very poorly in the way they handled the thing, though I felt very sorry for Gerald McCarthy. Denis Walsh is obviously doing a good job now, I can see Cork coming out and throwing the kitchen sink at Tipp.”