Laboratory conditions right for Clare to win league

When we won the All-Ireland with Clare in 1995, the following year’s league kicked off that October. The celebrations obviously took their toll early in the campaign. We lost our first match to Kerry but the bank of fitness we’d built up stood to us as October segued into November. We went up to Birr and put on an exhibition against Offaly in our last match before the winter-break.

Once our foot was off the gas and we could almost smell the Christmas turkey, some of us overdid the table and the high stool. When we returned from the team holiday in Thailand, I had an arse on me the size of a bag of cement and the belly wasn’t hectic either. I wasn’t the only one. A certain midfielder who I won’t mention – it wasn’t Colin Lynch, put it that way – piled on a good few inches that winter.