Can Dónal Óg Cusack bring X Factor to Davy Fitzgerald’s Clare project?

Yesterday’s revelation that Dónal Óg Cusack is to join the Clare hurling backroom team was the 21st-century GAA news story par excellence.

From the early susurrations on social media to the carefully crafted press release, from the cross-county fertilisation to the reference to the Gaelic Players Association, everything was in place; aptly enough, because practically everybody named in dispatches yesterday got something out of the announcement.

That’s not a reference to a press corps hungry for narratives: The easy opinion is that Cusack and Clare boss Davy Fitzgerald are too strong-minded as individuals to gel on the sideline, and that one would be well advised to look at them in next season’s games rather than the action on the field to see the inevitable bust-up, but the opposite is the case.