O’Leary hopes Newmarket can give Banner a boost

When Newmarket-on-Fergus captain Enda Barrett received the Canon Hamilton Cup at the end of the Clare county final he said he was receiving it on behalf of Newmarket teams going back 31 years.

No wonder. Their previous title, in 1981, brought down the curtain on a dominant spell that had yielded 13 titles in 20 years. The three decades since then had yielded a couple of close calls in the 2006 and 2008 finals but it took until this year to break that drought.

Former senior manager Diarmuid O’Leary doesn’t feel that long barren spell was necessarily a burden on the club’s players, however.