'We had to stop an A v B game last week, we were going too well'

It was just over two hours before throw-in that Davy Fitzgerald broke it to Clare's three goal hero Shane O'Donnell he was starting.

All week, the bush telegraph in the county had rang loud with rumours of the Ennis teenager coming in for Darach Honan.

And while the world and his mother knew he was going to start his first game for Clare since the qualifier win over Wexford, a game in which he scored 1-1, the 19-year-old was told for certain he was in from the start.

“I only told him at 2.50pm today so he hadn't too much time to worry about the nerves. I rang him the last few days and said 'you're probably going to come on at some stage' and we decided just to keep it from him. Now, probably everyone else around the county knew (he would start).”

Sitting beside Fitzgerald post-match in the interview room, Tony Kelly joked: “He (O'Donnell) was coming off the bus and he nearly got sick!”

Having “carried” Clare during the league when Honan and Conor McGrath were sidelined with injuries, Fitzgerald had no doubts about O’Donnell's ability to step up to the mark.

“I asked him for four (goals)!” he laughed. “He was very close to getting it too, so he was! Tony will tell you Shane O'Donnell in training over the last two weeks has been incredible.

“We played a match last Friday night, the A’s v B’s, and I never seen anything like it. In 21 minutes, we'd eight goals and nine points scored and we had to stop it. That's fact and we said 'f***, it's a week too early. We're going too well'. That is the truth, we were absolutely flying it.”

Fitzgerald explained Honan had been dropped as the management were uncertain he had done enough training having struggled with injury for the majority of the Championship.

“Darach Honan, let me make this clear, has been carrying an injury for three months that no-one has known about. He has a 16 centimetre tear in his quad muscle. He's only roughly been training once a week for the last three months.

“How he has managed to do what he's done is incredible. We decided he just wasn't getting enough training done, if we could get 15 or 20 minutes out of him because we felt the injury had taken so much out of him and by God what a display he gave when he came on. He got the goal that clinched it for us.”

An immensely proud Fitzgerald lauded his players for the manner in which they handled losing an eight-point lead.

“We played probably the best 20 minutes I've ever seen at the start. We were on fire but I suppose naturally you're not going to keep going at that pace.

“The biggest test of a Clare team that I've ever seen is when they brought it back to zero because everything was going against us. It's not down to anything I'll done or our management; it's down to the boys themselves. These young boys have incredible resilience. It didn't come from anyone else training (them), it comes from themselves.

“They are good kids, they are honest kids. They never give up. They are fellas who mind themselves unbelievable. They showed out there today what the story is. For me personally, I'm just so proud of them and the way they handled themselves because you have to think that they are so young.

“In the heat of battle, we lost a nine-point (sic) lead and they hit us with everything they had and we still came back for more and finished it with style so I'm very proud.”

Fitzgerald had put an emphasis on keeping his players fresh between the two games.

“The longest session we had in the last three weeks was one hour and seven minutes. The rest of our sessions was probably 30 to 40 minutes.

“We took a chance on freshness. If you think about it and Tony will tell you, we had to be at Championship pace for the league because we just wanted to survive. We were flat out since February. We were trying to maintain all summer. We wouldn't have trained as hard in the summer as we would have during earlier in the year. We were just trying to keep freshness.”

Fitzgerald could also afford to smile about their 12 men on the goal-line tactic at stopping Anthony Nash.

“It worked on the last one alright, thanks be to God. We all know the rule has to be looked at; it isn’t a right rule. What came into my head directly after the last game, and the boys thought I was nuts, was cover as much space as you possibly can in the goals. Give him as little space to shoot at as possible.”

The Sixmilebridge man thinks the sky is the limit now for his players. “This crowd can do whatever they want. The only thing is, I was worried about transition because we have had good U21 teams in the past and we didn’t win Championship games for years afterwards. In 2009, we didn’t win anything afterwards.”

After being on the end of an All-Ireland final hammering with Waterford five years ago, the feeling was extra special for Fitzgerald.

“There's been a few tough years from my point of view. A lot of stick and different things and, God, does this feel good. Am I going to say anything to risk getting the back cut off me? Nah. I don't think I need that.”