Blend of youth and passion a match for the best

Louis Mulqueen on what drives the Banner.

Know where you’ve come from. “When Cork beat us in the semi-final, if we had lost the next match (to Laois) people would have been looking for a change of management.”

Know where you are. “If we’d gone to Paddy Power earlier in the year and said the two teams in the relegation final would be in the All-Ireland, we wouldn’t need to work ever again.”

Know where you could be. “Clare people will travel in numbers to watch this final. There has been a slow build-up of support but if we lose on Sunday there will be a lot of people telling us where we went wrong.”

Pessimism isn’t Louis Mulqueen’s suit but forgive him if he looks over the shoulder. He glows with positivity about this Clare team but the realist in him tempers every assertion with a warning.

Tomorrow is an opportunity that must be taken, he says. It just so happens the race to be the best is also the same competition for most improved.

He doesn’t necessarily mean while the Cats are away, the mice will play but the Clare selector knows what an All-Ireland title would do for these greenhorns of Davy Fitzgerald’s.

Empowerment.

“I remember being on the floor of the dressing room after the 2002 final and Ger Loughnane came in and gave me a tap of the foot and (said) that it had been a great year.

“But it’s like someone had deflated you. The difference between winning and losing ... they’re two different worlds.

“A win would mean so much to Clare because it would add to the confidence. When we put a run together people have seen the potential that is there but it’s not reality until we win. If this team could win something they would grow. Next year could be totally different. You could get beaten by Tipperary in Munster and Kilkenny after that. Both for Cork and ourselves it’s the greatest opportunity maybe for awhile.”

Parallels are easily drawn between the progress of the two counties although Clare’s record of three wins over Cork prior to the Munster semi-final this year was flattered by the Waterford Crystal game in Sixmilebridge when the visiting team arrived in dribs and drabs because of traffic chaos caused by an oil spill on the M18.

Mulqueen jokes that things were that bad for Cork that Jimmy Barry-Murphy was almost togging out that night.

He made a similar joke to the Cork manager on the day of that provincial defeat when Cork had been written off because of their list of injuries.

“At one stage I laughed to him that they must be picking the bus driver because they were down so many people. But from the long grass the ambush was there. Davy knew it. I knew it. We told the players but it still happened.

“They then stuffed us in the game we wanted to beat them in. I remember Seán Óg Ó hAilpín saying if Cork had any pride they wouldn’t be beaten by Clare a fourth time (in the one season).”

Mulqueen and Barry-Murphy have a good relationship and the former recognises a kinship in how each team have proven people wrong.

“Whatever happens in the final, people have to be sensible. Both teams are progressing and going in the right direction this year.”

Getting his excuses in early? Think again. Mulqueen takes the slightest of offences to the generic belief this Clare crop has matured early.

“This team has been coming for awhile. If you look at the two or three U21 teams we’ve had and the minors, there has been a nucleus of good players coming through. That’s what we haven’t had in Clare for a long time. Consistency. You might have had a good team, then average enough for the next year or two, and you’re only getting one or two players.

“What has happened in the space of the U21 sides and the minors over the last five or six years — and it’s down to work at club and county level — is that you’re getting five or six players from each group.

“Then you have a backbone of very good players who have stood the time. The likes of Brendan Bugler, Pat Donnellan and Colin Ryan. John Conlon came out with Darach Honan two or three years before that.

“Davy, then. A very meticulous and intelligent type of manager and he’s held it together with his faith in youth and passion. When you put all that together we have a Clare squad that is up for any match, probably doesn’t fear anybody and wants to go out and perform to their maximum. It’s a big test tomorrow but we’re looking forward to it more than fearing it.”

Croke Park holds no fears now, anyway. Not after beating Limerick last month.

“When a young team goes up to Croke Park, you don’t know how they’ll react but they were very composed. What I liked was they played with cleverness and intensity. Equally, Limerick could have put us away in the first 20 minutes. They’d a lot of bad wides and (Graeme) Mulcahy could have got a goal. But even when they came back at us, we kept control of that match and that’s what we’re learning as the year goes on.”

This day week, the county’s U21s face Antrim to retain their All-Ireland title and Mulqueen emphasises just how mutually beneficial the two teams have been to one another.

“I was involved with the minors in ‘97 and we were playing before the seniors all the time. There was a buzz around the county and it was a crest of a wave and I think the minors played better because the seniors were winning. There was a kind of euphoria in the county.

“What I’m noticing with the U21s is we’re alternating every two weeks or sometimes a week but you’ve got the nucleus of the same players who are playing very, very well in both grades. When they win, that confidence you can’t buy. You go from Croke Park to Thurles in the space of a week and those are the places you dream of playing in.

“When they won the U21 Munster final they came to us for the next match on a high. If they had lost that you had the problem psychologically of lifting them so winning has been a great help for us as much as it has for them. I think both management teams are working well together. In the past, you’d see county teams not doing that.”

The names of Tony Kelly, David McInerney and Podge Collins are quickly becoming familiar, if not yet household names. Mulqueen, though, knows finals have a recent habit of making heroes of the humble.

“The All-Ireland final, a lot of it bypasses players and what you notice from previous finals it’s sometimes a lesser profile in the media that steals the limelight on the day. You’ve seen Fogarty and Walter Walsh from Kilkenny — it’s names people aren’t expecting rise to the top. It could be the same with Cork. It could like in the semi-final when they beat us and it was an unknown from a junior club (Seamus Harnedy).”

To recover from that June defeat has been an accomplishment in itself. Unlike Cork, the beginning of Clare’s league campaign didn’t augur well either. Tomorrow is a long way from the heckles and exasperations in Cusack Park losing the Division 1A opening game to Waterford in February.

“We were slated after that match and when we were beaten by Cork we were slated. That’s the GAA, but what has been very pleasing is the thousands who came to see us in training and that’s what has been missing for a while in Clare. We had it in ‘95 and ‘97. We wanted to bring the pride back in Clare and make them competitive again. Davy, for me, has those boxes ticked.” As practical as he is, the school principal has left space for the big swoosh.