How Clare discovered the magic

Around 7pm last Saturday night, Darach Honan was on the flat of his back on a field in Dublin, looking up at the sky, or what he could see of it above the Croke Park floodlights.

“Everyone knew it was over. That we’d won the All-Ireland. There were all sorts of emotions — relief, pure joy, the sense of coming off the bench. I had something to prove. It was a mash-up of a lot of emotions.”

He’d just danced down the end line to score the clinching goal in the All-Ireland final replay. Cue the celebration. The emotional trip home.

“Every county wants to win the All-Ireland,” says Syl O’Connor. “But when it actually happens... it’s magic.”

As Clare FM’s commentator, O’Connor’s voice is known all over the Banner, and beyond since his end-of-game commentary went viral, in the parlance of our times.

As a former Clare GAA PRO, he’s closer to the intercounty team than most.

“The most important thing I picked up between the draw and the replay was that the players realised very rapidly that the opportunity wasn’t gone. It was still there.

“They’d played exceptionally well against a very good Cork side — something that people shouldn’t forget by the way: scoring 6-32 in two All-Ireland finals is some going.

“Our lads showed in the opening period of the replay that they were carrying on where they left off in the drawn game.

“The other factor was that they were enjoying it. The build-up to Limerick-Clare was huge, the build-up to the drawn final the same and it was as big for the replay, but they were enjoying it.

“There’s also huge competition for places: there were players taken off last Saturday who’ll certainly be in contention for All Star awards, but it makes no difference. Why? Because they’re enjoying themselves.”

There’s another factor, of course. The manager.

O’Connor spent a few seasons with Davy Fitzgerald as a club selector with Sixmilebridge. “Davy is absolutely meticulous. You could get a phone call from him at any time of the day or night about a plan he has in mind.

“He doesn’t walk into meetings empty-handed. He’ll prepare for them. But he might give the impression when he comes in that he’s got nothing to say.

“What he’ll do is ask you what you have in mind and he’ll debate with you: ‘why did we take off the number seven, why did we move the number 13 out the field’. He’ll discuss that stuff all day with you and take one thing out of the discussion, maybe, to use.” A couple of weeks before Clare and Limerick played in the All-Ireland semi-final, for instance, O’Connor’s phone buzzed with a call from Fitzgerald: “He said to me, ‘have you seen such-and-such a player’ and I said, ‘he’s small but he’s lively, he had a bit of an injury earlier in the year but he’s going well now’.

“That player wasn’t on the Clare senior panel but Fitzy said, ‘I’m thinking of bringing him in during the winter’. The point here is that even while they were preparing for the All-Ireland semi-final, he was still looking around for players for next season. ‘I must get him built up a bit,’ he said to me, ‘there’s something to him.’ That’s Davy — thinking ahead all the time.

“What you see depends a lot on what you look for. There’s a perception that if you stick near him you’ll get a headline, you’ll get something. But it’s not a show. That’s who he is. His passion is near the surface. If you think he’s lively during a match you should see him at training.”

On the bus back to Clare on Sunday evening, O’Connor asked about the pre-match interviews the manager had been giving to RTÉ all summer, sketches in intensity which caused no end of comment. “If they want a show, they’ll have to go to someone else,” Fitzgerald told O’Connor. “They’re the questions I’m asked, those are the answers I have, that’s what I believe in.”

Fr Harry Bohan of Sixmilebridge had a humming phone himself on Tuesday. Fitzgerald had just cited him as an inspiration on RTÉ radio and people were keen to touch base with the cleric as a result.

Few people know the Clare boss better than Fr Harry.

“The bullying he spoke about on the radio, that meant he was alone for a good bit of his childhood, and he could have gone down, but he didn’t — he got the best out of himself.

“Because of that, he’s good with people who are lonely themselves, for whatever reason. Before the final he pointed out to the players that there were plenty of young people who’d love the opportunity to play in Croke Park, the disabled and the sick, and he got into their heads the concept that Croke Park was a great place to be, and that they were lucky to be there to enjoy it.

“I’m doing house calls to elderly people, a lot of them are probably pretty lonely, but I’ve never seen as many of them smiling. It’s given them a huge boost, but it’s taking me at least twice as long as it usually does. They all want to talk through the entire game all over again.

“It’s given the place a huge boost. We haven’t won too many of them here in Clare. It’s easy to say that a very special group of people have won an All-Ireland, because it always takes a very special group to win an All-Ireland. ”

Bohan sees an opportunity in the hurlers’ success. He was on the platform with them in Sixmilebridge and says there wasn’t a hint of drink among them: “At a time when young people need role models, when drugs and drink are doing huge damage to young people, we genuinely believe these lads can be role models. They’ve lived since last Christmas in a non-drink culture, something Davy introduced because he’s like that himself.

“We’ve to pay massive tribute to Cork, and to Jimmy Barry-Murphy in the same way. For the game to be that good, and the graciousness of the man afterwards...

“Everyone here is talking about role models — there’s a role model.”

The panel will do the rounds of the schools, he says, but it won’t just be about dishing out half-days.

“It’s not about bringing the cup to show it off. Celebrating, having a good time, that’s great, but they’re going to bring a message to the schools — that there’s a lot we can achieve if we set our minds to it ourselves. Including creating jobs, which we’ve been doing here in recent years.”

Fr Harry points out that while everyone saw Shane O’Donnell get three goals last Saturday and saw him get mobbed at the GOAL game on Wednesday, people didn’t see him approach his manager with a question.

“He asked Davy, ‘How am I going to cope with this new-found fame? Because I’m going to have to cope with it.’ That was a very mature question. You wouldn’t get it from some 50-year-olds. He was asking Davy for guidance in getting his feet back on the ground, which is a good sign for such a young lad.”

Entering Ennis on Sunday evening, about a 100 yards before they got into the middle of the crowd, Syl O’Connor saw Ger Loughnane and Tony Considine standing on a corner.

“The 1995-7 team had their time, they were all in Croke Park to support the lads, but they were always the type of fellas who’d say, ‘we had our time in the limelight — but it’s the lads’ turn now.’ That’s the type of character they were, and they certainly wouldn’t want to take away any of the limelight from the 2013. ”

One of those players was in Croke Park on Saturday, and he was busy Sunday, but he still got back to Clare for the homecoming. Anthony Daly had Dublin senior hurling championship games to watch but he lit out west soon afterwards.

“I remembered how special it was to come to Clarecastle after games as a player, and I wanted to be there before the team got there. They were delayed on the way out so I made it.”

He and some of the other 1995 players were invited onto the platform — “Sparrow did all the talking,” he says — but it was the 2013 lads’ turn.

“It was great to meet them up on the platform, we (Clarecastle) had three on the training panel and the Ballyea lads are from nearby as well, but it was their time in the sun.

“The young kids were at the front of the stage and when we went up, before the players arrived, they were all saying, ‘ye’re the old team, ye’re the old team’.

“Sure their fathers were getting them to give us papers for autographs and they were obviously thinking, ‘who’s this baldy fella?’”

The current crop themselves were in awe of the scene before them.

“We’ve had underage success,” says Darach Honan. “But nothing like the crowds last weekend... as far as you could see, nothing but Clare people. The flags, the colours, an unbelievable spectacle.”

In his own time the big full-forward was one of the kids looking up at the heroes. The Honan household was rocked by the arguments between a five-year-old who wanted to go to Croke Park in 1995, though he made it to Dublin in 1997: “It inspired me, definitely, to want to do what they did. And you can see what it means to people — what it meant at the final whistle up in Dublin. Looking into the crowd in Croke Park is something that’ll always stay with me, to see them going crazy.”

Daly, ever the thinker on the game, can see the quality of Clare’s forward play this year originating in the changing face of minor hurling in the county.

“There has been very good coaching, that’s improved in recent years.

“After 1997 the county board took its eye off the ball a little and Colin Lynch was a one-man band, trying to coach hurling and football all over Clare on his own. Now you have four hurling coaches, maybe three football coaches, all of them working hard and the clubs all working hard. We (Clarecastle) haven’t won a county since 2005 but we’re back competing, in a minor semi-final and so on.

“One aspect of the improvement is that the likes of Clonlara, Cratloe and Crusheen realised there were opportunities there if they put in the work, and they passed out the clubs in mid-Clare — Clarecastle, Sixmilebridge, Wolfe Tones and so forth. Those clubs were the mainstay of the 1995-7 team and they had to respond to the challenge.

“Amalgamations have also been a huge factor. At minor you have Inagh-Kilnamona in the semis, and they’re no longer a combination, they’re one club while there’s talk that Feakle and Killanena will also become one club.

“A lot of those clubs might have played C or D minor, but by amalgamating, standards have risen. Our minors (Clarecastle) would find it very hard to beat them.

“By standards rising, I mean good players can play in the forwards — there was a time, when these clubs were on their own, that their best players were full or centre-back. Now, with the amalgamations, the good players are allowed to play centre-forward or even corner-forward. And you can see it in the senior team, because 5-16, which they got in the final, wouldn’t be a usual Clare score.

“Also, there’s obviously been a lot of work done with the (senior) team not to play with fear — you saw them bouncing the ball off the ground, Pat Donnellan flicking the ball back over his head. There’s been an encouragement to express yourself, and the improvement in coaching standards has also borne fruit at senior level. ”

Fr Harry isn’t buying into the easy talk that Clare are set to dominate for years to come, though. Neither is Darach Honan.

“Davy’s done a lot of radical things this year,” says Bohan. “But once other teams cop you, that comes to an end and you’re there to be shot down.

“Still, fellas should enjoy the win and live in the moment and not be thinking of next year. Do your best next year and leave it ‘til then.”

Honan says: “We nearly lost the first day, there wouldn’t be much talk of dominating for years if that had happened. The talk of dominating for years doesn’t add up. When Tipp won a few years back, people said that would happen but it didn’t.

“Our attitude beforehand was that we might never again see an All-Ireland final, so we said we’d take the chance when we had it.”

On Sunday, as the team bus finally stopped in the centre of Ennis and the group prepared to meet the crowd gathered to welcome them, O’Connor brought some notes down to Fitzgerald, who was at the back of the bus.

“What do you think of it?” said the manager.

“What we’ve felt over the last two days, you’d love to make it up,” said O’Connor. “Isn’t it great that you don’t have to make it up?”