Exuberance of youth keeps Flanagan flying
They still won the game and qualified for this afternoon’s final against Antrim, but for Cunningham it was a dark day. He misses not just today’s U21 final but also had to sit out the drawn All-Ireland senior final against Cork last Sunday.
His replacement on the senior panel of 26? Clare U21 corner-back and captain Paul Flanagan.
It has been a hectic few weeks then for the Ballyea youngster, a hectic few months even for those on both Clare panels as they mounted their parallel campaigns to get to these finals but, says Flanagan, these are times he wouldn’t swap for anything.
“Obviously a very busy week moving from one All-Ireland to the other but it’s brilliant. That’s all you’d want to be playing at this time of the year. Over the summer it’s been that way all of the time.
“You’ve just been going from one set-up into the other and it’s grand. You play the match on Sunday and you’d be back in training on the Tuesday night with the other set-up. You just recover as quickly as you can and get ready for that game. It’s brilliant to be playing the big games, week-in week-out.”
There won’t be any hangover from last Sunday either, Clare having to do it all again despite being the better team on the day. Quite the opposite in fact, says Flanagan with the exuberance of youth.
“I think the mood is very positive. We’ve a game that was very much in the balance for both teams and it was always going to be that way. Anyone who’d called it before the game wouldn’t have said there was going to be no more than a few points between us and it turned out that way.
“All these games, there’s not going to be much between the teams and anything can tip the balance, which it did. Cork got goals at crucial times and could have won the game at the very end. It just shows you how little is in games.”
It could even be argued that Clare are again the team with tails up after the draw, Domhnall O’Donovan rescuing the tie with an injury-time point. Not something you see very often, a corner-back doing the necessary up front. And it’s not something Flanagan had ever seen before where the dynamic O’Donovan is concerned.
“I actually haven’t, to be honest with you! As a corner-back myself I really appreciated that. Ah no, Domhnall has a mind of steel, a real character within the group and I’m just delighted for him.
“In positions like that you need someone that’s going to stand up and it doesn’t matter if you’re good at shooting or bad at shooting, you’re going to stand up and take it. He did that and I was delighted for him.”
He’s of a similar style himself, is Flanagan: pacy, tight-marking, ultra-competitive, does his primary destructive defensive duty well but is also a constructive hurler and part of the launch pad for attack.
A product of the Clare academy system that’s been devised and put in place over several years he combines well with the traditional club and school set-up.
“I came up along the way in development squads from U14. We were the second or third year. It’s the culmination of a few things really, the set-up of the development squads, different coaches around the county who have had a serious influence.
“You’ve had coaches in Cratloe, in our own parish of Ballyea in both schools and clubs, who’ve had significant influence on the group of players that has come through.
“In my own parish we had coaches such as the school principal Eddie Liddy, in Cratloe where you’d the likes of [players] Podge Collins, Conor Ryan, Seán Collins. All of those guys would say their school principal and their coaches would have been absolutely brilliant.
“Together with that, the development squads moving on to minor and the quality of coaches there, the quality of management that has come through.
“It was mostly skills-based work but it was only when we merged into minor that it really took hold and you’d the likes of Paul Kinnerk and Gerry [O’Connor] and Donal [Moloney]. Paul had a big influence on the way we played and the way we developed our game in general. It’s been the culmination of a few things coming together.”
He could actually have said ‘the culmination to date’ because well as Clare have done so far, there’s more, and a hell of a lot more, in this group.
It has already begun, two All-Ireland U21 titles already won, in 2009 and 2012, it will continue this afternoon in Thurles. Where or when it will all end, God only knows, but even the sky isn’t the limit for these guys.
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