A sense of destiny for the Banner, believes Gilligan
Father Time was pointing impatiently at his watch but the great Clare team of the 90s still had things to do.
Defeat to Cork in the 1999 Munster final had obliged them into an appointment in the form of an All-Ireland quarter-final against a younger Galway side that mirrored so many of that county’s offerings in terms of both their talent and their quest for deliverance.
The sense late that summer was that Galway were a coming team and that Ger Loughnane’s, replete with a clutch of the heroes from their two All-Ireland winning sides, was travelling as fast as their ageing bodies would let them in the opposite direction.
As was the case last Saturday, it ended in a draw after a breathless engagement.
Five goals and 40 points were recorded — a more than decent sum for the era — and an epic of an encounter threw up a brawl, a comeback, and a controversy to boot.
“Isn’t hurling mighty when it’s played like that?” said Loughnane.
Galway were divine at first and should have led by more than four at the interval.
The lead did expand to nine before Clare, helped no end by a Niall Gilligan goal and assist for an Alan Markham three-pointer, rediscovered the Banner’s equilibrium.
Trapped on the ropes throughout the first half, they found their feet on the restart.
The spur for it all was the introduction of a clearly unfit Jamesie O’Connor who had broken an arm in the Munster semi-final replay against Tipperary.
Clare rode their luck, too. Ollie Canning hit the crossbar with the 70 minutes almost done and referee Pat Horan decided to call for the ball at a point when Galway appeared to have earned what would have been an eminently scoreable free.
Gilligan, full-forward on the day, remembers it all vividly.
"That was a Clare team that still had the backbone of the sides that won the All-Irelands in ’95 and ’97 and the team that had gone through the trilogy with Offaly,” said the Sixmilebridge man who was just 22 at the time.
“We’d been beaten in the Munster final by Cork and we were trying to get back up on the horse again. Galway got a great start that first day.
They were nine points up after their start but that Clare team at the time always knew that they had a kick in them.
Gilligan can recall the feeling of calm even in the eye of the storm.
He never felt Clare were done. Not even when nine down and the minutes slipping through their fingers like water.
It was a confidence borne out of the many great deeds performed as a collective over the previous four years.
And the replay wasn’t long in bending to their will.
Clare would end the second encounter seven points to the good and it was more comfortable than that sounds.
Having claimed 1-3 first time around, Gilligan would add 2-3 and end the year as an All-Star.
The stubbornness and grit of that Clare side was typified in their rage against the dying of the light.
They accounted for Waterford after a replay in the ’98 Munster decider and Tipperary at the second opportunity in ’99 before repeating the trick against Galway.
Even Offaly, who eventually, and so controversially, got the better of them at the third time of asking in the ’98 All-Ireland semi-final, had been three adrift when Jimmy Cooney blew the whistle a few minutes early in the ‘original’ replay.
“A lot of them were at a time when that great Clare team was waning a small bit and we almost needed a bit of a kick in the backside,” said Gilligan.
“We came out of that replay with Galway fairly well. I think they might have had a few injuries at the time.”
That vintage finally lost its kick two weeks later when Kilkenny edged them in the last four.
And any doubt as to whether their days as a force were up were dispensed with the following summer with an opening loss to Tipp.
Gilligan remembers a sense of something approaching relief in the dressing room after that eight-point defeat to neighbours Tipp in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.
A recognition that they could take off their gloves, but he detects plenty of fight left in the current generation after their stalemate against Galway last weekend.
As a Clare man, it was fantastic. I was doing commentary in 2013 for the All-Ireland final, but last Saturday was one of the best I have ever seen as a spectator. Down 1-7 to a point after 14 or 15 minutes, and they just kept plugging away with point after point.
“They fought to the bitter end and I turned to the guy I was with at full-time and said, ‘those lads will still believe next week. They’ll still feel that they can do this’.
“A lot of them have done it before, but it’s a new game on Sunday.”
Replays rarely live up to the A-grade quality of the games that prompted them.
It was the case when Clare accounted for Galway in 1999 and yet there are reasons to doubt the All-Ireland champions and back the Banner in Thurles this weekend.
“The question on Sunday is about the Galway injuries. If Galway have a full side, they’ll be favourites and justifiably so.
"If McInerney and Canning and Daithi Burke are injured, or one of two of them, then there are question marks.
"We’ll hear nothing from either camp and rightly so before Sunday.
“The rumour is that McInerney is out and if that’s the case then it will be a huge blow for Galway. McInerney and Daithí Burke are the best partnership in the game at centre-back and full-back.
"I’ve said it before, the reason Galway won the All-Ireland last year was because they filled the holes at three and six.”
Then again, champions have a way of finding a way. As Clare did so often two decades ago.
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