Davy will have Clare primed for detonation

If Clare are the team we think they might be, then they’ll win this with a bit to spare.

MUNSTER SHC SEMI-FINAL:

Clare v Cork

So here it is. The first red-letter occasion of the 2014 championship. Potentially the most far-reaching fixture this side of the All-Ireland semi-finals.

Above all, the day after Clare’s 21st birthday party and the moment adult life begins for them.

It is the afternoon the MacCarthy Cup holders launch their new campaign manifesto and give, papal-style, an urbi et orbi.

What does the manifesto say? Here’s what it says.

We’re the champions. We’re the champions, but that’s not enough for us. In fact, that’s only the start of it. We’re going to retain the title, and if we can’t retain the title then we’re going to win the next two All-Irelands after that. Because we want to. Because Davy won’t let us settle for anything less. Because we’re that good, that ambitious, that determined. Young, gifted and Banner.

Nine months ago this boy band topped the charts with a slice of perfect bubblegum pop. Tuneful, danceable, joyous, ephemeral, a three-minute candy-coloured confection like something Kylie would have done for Stock Aitken Waterman. But while we still can’t get it out of our heads, great singles are no guarantor of street cred; the really successful teams produce albums for grown-ups. Clare go back into studio tomorrow.

The entrails are encouraging. They did well in the league without doing too well, making a point a couple of times along the way of letting everyone know exactly who was boss now. Come the semi-final against Tipp they may not quite have run a non-trier but they didn’t need to reach the final, they didn’t need to meet Kilkenny in it and they took good care not to show anything of their hand when they met the latter at the opening of James Stephens’ new facility in mid-May. In sum, they got as much from the league as needed. Clare are playing the long game.

It stands to reason they’ll be a better team in 2014 than in ’13. More confident, more expansive, more familiar with each other, more familiar with the type of game they’re playing, yet not too long on the road for legs to have slowed or minds become blunted and not too accustomed to success to have become sated.

They’ll need to be. This is a team that hit 25 scores in 70 minutes last September and still didn’t win. Not the worst of asterisks to have against one’s name, clearly, but it will remain a small asterisk until or unless Clare erase it with a second All-Ireland triumph. This could again be won via the back door but it mustn’t be. Real champions travel first-class, in style and with outriders. They’ve had sight of tomorrow for a long time, possibly too long; the league semi-final took place on April 20. That said, given the feats he’s overseen over the past year, Davy can surely be trusted to have them primed for detonation here. On which point, of all the plaudits Clare picked up last year the one that’s most important, and the one the manager may well take most pride from, is that they remained an engaging bunch of young lads. Between their verve on the field and their deportment off it they made a beaten nation feel better about itself. For that we will be in Davy’s debt.

Clare have, or aspire to have, or wish us to think they have, every cunning plan from A to whatever the one past Z is, all of them rehearsed and refined to within an inch of their lives. That last part you wouldn’t doubt for a moment. The issue tomorrow isn’t so much which plan they’ll employ but which plan Cork surmise they’ll employ and how Cork will configure accordingly– or, rather, which plan Clare surmise Cork surmise they’ll employ and how Clare will configure accordingly. (I have a pain in my head after typing that sentence.)

Of this much we can be sure, however. If Clare opt for a one-man full-forward line Cork will put a spare man in front of it, simply because, in view of the events of the All-Ireland replay, they cannot afford not to. Thursday night’s training session in Páirc Uí Chaoimh was closed; one can understand why. Against the most tactically advanced entity hurling has yet witnessed, Cork cannot – as Harry Redknapp might put it — just go out and fackin’ hurl. That way madness lies. And destruction.

Seventy years ago, having cleared the beaches, the Allies became entangled in the Normandy bocage. The danger for the underdogs here is not dissimilar: getting bogged down in the middle third while Clare spray passes all around them and break at speed. Shane O’Donnell is a loss, Croke Park hat-tricks apart, because he functions so well as the tip of the spear, being low slung and quick off the mark. But injuries are among the irritants with which new champions must cope. One assumes Cork will have it beaten into Damien Cahalane to try and be first out to the ball. In the league quarter-final he played Seamus Callanan from behind and laboured for the opening 20 minutes before the penny dropped and he began to attack the sliotar. Remember, Cathal McInerney – or whoever — can’t lay it off to the runners if he can’t get it into his hand in the first place.

The pros and cons of Cork’s additional outing can be summed up as follows. On the plus side: extra sharpness, superior match fitness and the discovery of some kind of groove. On the minus side: six days as opposed to a fortnight to prepare for Clare, a team you’d really want six months with a bunch of pointy- headed boffins in white coats in a top-secret underground facility to be comfortable about deconstructing.

The fact the games were against Waterford, who set up not a million miles differently to Clare, is a small help. As against that, the Waterford forwards were so flat last Sunday as to be incapable of asking the Cork full-back line even the most harmless two-marker. Cork will be better for winning without prominent contributions from Aidan Walsh and Alan Cadogan, two of their notables in the drawn game. What’s more, they’ve added to their roster of trigger men with Cadogan supplementing Seamus Harnedy, Pat Horgan – if there can be said to be a front runner for Hurler of the Year at this stage he’s it – and Conor Lehane. That’s a quartet of unusually accurate riflemen on their day.

They also have their Corkness. That shouldn’t be underestimated, because though Corkness doesn’t work on the days they’re beaten, it was nothing bar their Corkness that kept them in it both days last September.

There’s an operative phrase that’s handy for situations like this. If X are the team we think they are, then they’ll do Y and Z tomorrow. The caveat is all-important and self- exculpatory; if they fail to end up doing Y and Z, well, obviously they weren’t the team we thought they were. Plausible deniability.

If Clare are the team we think they might be, then they’ll win this with something in hand. C’mon, Davy, do the locomotion.