McGrath scoring points to prove one

To prove he is good enough to play inter-county football, twice a week Shane McGrath makes the two-and-a-half-hour journey from Dublin, where he was born and where he has played his club football all his life, to Clare, the county of his parents.

There were times when all those kilometres travelled in the last three years seemed to be leading nowhere. Depressing dead-ends and nagging questions. After a second failed attempt to get out of Division 4 last year and a 16-point qualifier defeat to Laois, the Clare footballer wondered if it was all a waste of time.

“I remember driving back to Dublin thinking: ‘Where do we go from here? What’s the point?’”