Maturing Clare learning how to get the job done

MUNSTER SHC SEMI-FINAL:

Piece of cáca milis. Have a look at the video of the first threequarters of Clare versus Waterford at Semple Stadium and you’ll be away in a hack. Presented with such evidence, there isn’t a jury in the land that wouldn’t be entitled to harbour a reasonable doubt as to the chances of Davy Fitz’s lads getting the job done at the Gaelic Grounds.

Pronounced and self-defeating fussiness with sideline cuts. A goal and at least two points coughed up by opting for a short ball where a long ball would have sufficed. The sum total of 0-5 scored between the seventh minute and the 43rd minute — an entire half of a match.

Yet here’s the thing. Clare not only committed all those sins and won, they committed them and sauntered home by eight points.

True, they were entitled to beat that particular Waterford XV three weeks ago. They were even entitled, if everything went right on the day, to beat them well. Everything didn’t go right on the day, far from it, but they hit 2-6 in the closing quarter and won pulling away nonetheless. In the process they achieved a feat that, for all their myriad virtues, was permanently beyond Ger Loughnane’s edition of the saffron and blue. They won playing badly.

It was the day the new Clare became a championship team, a kind of Year Zero in Davy Fitz’s second season in charge. Tomorrow marks another potential milepost on their nascent journey. Victory and they’ll not merely have reached the provincial final, they’ll also have won two successive Munster championship matches for only the second time this century. In a way the latter would constitute a more significant achievement than the former.

And another thing. Much of what the Banner did badly on June 2 can be corrected. These were problems with the facade of the building, not the foundations. Will Pat Donnellan, for instance, ever give away another goal by attempting a 10-metre pass from the heart of his own defence when — because not every ball needs to be made a percentage ball, not even with this Clare team — he can drive it half the length of the field instead? No.

Will they give away a simple, annoying point to one of the Cork half-forwards by going short from a midfield sideline cut? Presumably not, although a rethink of their line ball strategy is in order.

To wit: why flick the sliotar five yards sideways to a marked colleague, thereby risking a turnover within point-concession distance, when you can make the enemy defence turn and sprint by flaying it 40 yards on the diagonal to a forward who’s out to it a step in front of his marker? The presence of a chap as big as Darach Honan, who presumably barely missed out on being cast as one or other of the two towers in the second Lord of the Rings film, is only of benefit when he’s in full and gainful employment, not lounging around waiting for work to come his way.

Davy isn’t going to rethink his grand plan, of course. That’s a given. He’s invested too much time, thought and faith in it. So, even though the current margin for error is too wide, Clare readers tempted to howl in anguish when passes go astray tomorrow shouldn’t bother. There will be no doctrinal shift.

What’s required now is time and flexibility. Time to allow the players to grow with the system and fully come to terms with it. Flexibility on the part of the manager to allow them tweak it as they go. To learn when to play the short, manicured ball to a colleague. To learn when to forget about putting a message on the sliotar and to just lorry it down the field instead and let what happens happen. When to hold, when to fold.

We mentioned one difference with the Loughnane team a few paragraphs ago. Here’s another.

John Conlon and Tony Kelly hit three points apiece against Waterford. Smooth, stylish points from a variety of angles and distances. The pair of them will do that most days.

Clare weren’t blessed with a brace of scoring half-forwards in the age of Loughnane, even at its high-water mark. Granted, Jamesie did it most afternoons and one of the other forwards — Fergie Tuohy in the 1995 All-Ireland final, to take the most obvious example — would strike a good day every so often.

But the task of racking up enough points for victory was always a permanent and painful drama, a ceaseless struggle between the forwards and their scoring limitations. With the new Clare generation, racking up enough points for victory won’t be.

All of that said, Cork are nicely positioned. If only because Clare are not, what with their opponents’ injuries and the excitement silently bubbling in the Banner about a prospective Munster final date with the neighbours. Emerging teams in Clare’s place right now constantly lose matches they’re supposed to win. It comes with the territory.

Still, a Cork panel that needed to be supplemented over the winter and spring has instead been shorn. Then there are the problems with their own puckout, as evidenced last year in the league and All-Ireland semi-finals, and the ongoing necessity to up their goalscoring rate — an imperative here because they’re scarcely going to outpoint Clare.

What’s more, and this is a bizarre observation to make of a Cork side, the men in red lack a unique selling point at the moment. Who are they? What are they about? What is, for want of a better phrase, their corporate identity? Other counties have their USPs. Kilkenny’s is power, focus and iron resolve. Tipperary’s on their good days is about a whirl of attacking movement. Clare’s is pace and possession retention. Galway’s is Joe Canning. Cork’s? For sure they’ll be neat and tidy and easy on the eye tomorrow. Being Cork, they may well be something more than that by September. As of now, however, they’re not.

It is set up for Clare to falter. Here’s someone who believes they won’t.