Cratloe’s current crop of stars are raising the bar

Pádraig Chaplin is fine-tuning the wiring in Setrights tavern.

TG4 are calling this morning and the final touch-ups are in full flow.

Every nook and cranny of Cratloe’s hurling haunt is being cleaned out; barmaid Emma O’Halloran laughs that it will Christmas before she gets a day off.

“As long as they keep winning I don’t mind a bit,” she laughs.

Chaplin, son of club chairman Jack, was sprung from the bench in the 2009 county final, Cratloe’s maiden appearance in the senior showpiece event.

An 18-year old Conor McGrath had struck the Clonlara net on two occasions when “super-sub” Chaplin delivered the winning major. Cratloe carried the day by 3-5 to 1-9.

“The greatest day in the history of the club,” maintained Jackie O’Gorman.

“We had hoped to win it, but just like this game with Cork you couldn’t be sure how it would go.”

O’Gorman, on the Clare panel from 1966-1979, admits the build-up to Sunday far exceeds the run-in to the 1995 and ’97 deciders for one simple reason. Cratloe are involved, centrally so. From having not one individual on Ger Loughnane’s All-Ireland winning panels, they now form the largest representation of the current crop. There was no TG4 calling back then, no reporters straying to these parts. Why would they? Apart from selector Tony Considine, Cratloe simply didn’t feature.

How times have changed.

“We are living in a great spell,” smiles club PRO Jim Enright. Conor McGrath, Podge Collins and Conor Ryan should all feature in Davy Fitzgerald’s starting fifteen for the rematch with Cork, while Liam Markham, Sean Collins and Cathal McInerney are among the substitutes.

Not forgetting Mike Deegan of course, one of Fitzgerald’s three selectors.

“Places like Cratloe normally wouldn’t have that many players on the county team. Obviously the build-up is very special this time around because so many of our boys are on the panel,” continued Enright.

Pa Quaine and Bob Frost were on the Clare team that won the National league title in 1946, but it would be another 20 years before a Cratloe native Jackie O’Gorman donned the saffron and blue. Damien Considine – owner of Setrights — came close in the mid-90s, but a knee injury ruled out his involvement.

A junior crown in 1976, an U-12B in 1982 and U-21B in 1989 was the height of their riches at club level. The intermediate title had been secured a decade earlier in 1970, but O’Gorman recalls their swift return to the second tier after a spell in the senior ranks. Indeed, the corner back’s lasting experience at senior club level arrived not in the blue of Cratloe, but in the colours of rivals Clonlara and Crusheen.

The Celtic Tiger played a defining role in Cratloe’s hurling fortunes. Located six miles from Limerick city centre, the village underwent something of a population boom in the nineties.

Among those to emigrate from the Treaty County were the parents of Cathal McInerney and Liam Markham.

Podge’s father Colm, a native of Kilmihil and his wife Kay, formerly of West Cork, set-up camp in Cratloe as did Phil Ryan, a native of Lattin-Cullen, and his wife Aileen, born and reared in Blackrock, Cork.

Probably the most influential arrival was that of Joe McGrath, Conor’s father. A native of Toomevara, Joe, much like his son, immersed himself in the club from the get-go, currently serving as senior manager and having played a crucial role as Mike Deegan’s right-hand man in the county title win of 2009.

“I would honestly say if Joe McGrath hadn’t got involved with the club none of these lads would have been on the Clare team,” says Enright.

“He coached them from the beginning. He would have coached them from the time they tied their laces.”