Christy O'Connor: Another glorious day of Clare’s electric summer

Tony Kelly of Clare celebrates after the GAA Hurling All-Ireland Senior Championship Quarter-Final match between Clare and Wexford at the FBD Semple Stadium in Thurles, Tipperary. Photo by Daire Brennan/Sportsfile

After his first missed free, Tony Kelly immediately put his hand up in acknowledgement. It was just outside the 45-metre line. The chance should have been nailed. Kelly shook his head. He had two more opportunities from frees inside two minutes to atone. Both were much more difficult than the first one but Kelly was wide on both occasions. The game was still only warming up but, already, the mood smacked of this being a long, draining and difficult afternoon for Clare.

After a Munster final in which they had emptied themselves physically and mentally in pursuit of a famine-ending victory, this was always bound to be a treacherous game for Clare. They were flat. There was no real rhythm or fluency to their play. Their big players were struggling to exert their authority on the match.

After the game had jack-knifed inside 16 seconds of the 50th minute when Ian Galvin’s shot crashed off the crossbar before being lashed to the net by Lee Chin at the other end, the technicoloured pathway Clare had painted through the summer suddenly looked splashed with dark colours and a black ending.

Clare hadn’t scored for 11 minutes. A Peter Duggan missed free shortly afterwards was Clare’s fifth missed chance from placed balls. Duggan finally staunched the bleeding with a free but when Mikey Dwyer put Wexford back in front by six with 12 minutes of normal time remaining, Clare’s season looked headed towards the most anti-climactic ending imaginable after the Hitchcockian drama and spell-binding narrative of the Munster final.

A new draft was still only loosely forming in Clare’s minds but they instantly began putting it down on the page. Aron Shanagher, who had just been introduced, reduced the margin to five points before Ryan Taylor turned over the puckout and Shane O’Donnell was fouled for a converted free. Within a handful of seconds, Shane Meehan had shaved the deficit down to three.

The storm was raging. Wildly. Clare continued to strangle Wexford on puckouts. Two of those scores came off Wexford puckouts while, after struggling on their own short puckout, two more of those points came off short Clare restarts.

Clare were gorging on turnovers. A gang of Clare players turned over Conor Devitt in possession and Taylor hoovered up the sliotar before being fouled. Kelly’s long range free was spilled by goalkeeper Mark Fanning and Shanagher whipped the loose sliotar to the net. Clare turned over the puckout again and Kelly blazed through the middle to push the margin out to three points.

And on it went in a saffron and blue storm, Wexford blown to smithereens in a tempest of intensity and brilliance. When the dust had settled and the damage was assessed, Wexford’s walls had cracked. The roof was blown off. Clare had outscored them by 1-9 to 0-2. Gone in 18 minutes.

The storm had been so relentlessly concussive that Wexford were stumbling as soon as Clare began the barrage. The outcome all the more devastating again when Clare had struggled for so long to generate that kind of a frenzy which they had whipped up and thrived in against Limerick.

Clare just found a way. Three Wexford goals forced them to chase the game more than they’d have wanted but Clare had 14 more shots (46-32) over the 70 plus minutes. Their conversion rate was only 56% but it was decisive when Clare needed it most.

More importantly, their big players produced big plays when the situation demanded that level of leadership, especially Kelly and O’Donnell, who came up with three points and three assists during that final burst. Duggan had also a huge say in that late push.

Meehan and Shanagher contributed 1-4 off the bench in excellent displays. Paul Flanagan was immense again. Diarmuid Ryan was brilliant all afternoon, attacking pockets of space and rifling three points. Yet when Clare pushed up in the second half, they were more exposed to long deliveries and Conor McDonald was fouled for three converted frees.

Wexford will have huge regrets at not closing out the game from such a commanding position but they never had time to compose themselves when Clare collapsed their platform so quickly. They were submerged beneath the raging tide Clare had whipped up but their struggles on puckouts all afternoon also eventually told; Wexford only won 11 of their 30 long restarts. As a comparison, Clare won 13 of their long puckouts.

Losing Rory O’Connor to injury after 13 minutes was a desperate blow. Outside of the goals, Wexford only managed 0-8 from play. Chin and Dwyer were the only two players to score from play in the second half. Wexford will point to Colm Lyons’ decision not to award Wexford a potential penalty and issue a black-card to Cian Nolan in the 70th minute, even if Paul Flanagan was scrambling back as the covering defender. Wexford were trailing by three points at that stage but Clare had still bent the game to their will and it was always going to take something special for Wexford to turn it around.

Clare just had more of an X-factor. In injury time, Kelly found himself on the ground after acrobatically snaffling a puckout that Duggan forced Matthew O’Hanlon to cough up. Kelly got up in a flash and danced through the Wexford cover before arrowing the ball over the bar. Clare won the Wexford puckout again before Shanagher landed the final rapier thrust to Wexford’s spirit.

Despite all the brilliant hurling Clare have played this summer, this felt like a liberation after the deep toxins of disappointment from the Munster final were flushed out of Clare’s system. Their performance levels will need to increase dramatically for the All-Ireland semi-final, but now that Clare are back in Croke Park again for only the second time since the 2013 All-Ireland final replay, they will look forward to Kilkenny in two weeks as a gateway back to the biggest day of all.

At the final whistle, Kelly raised his arms in a salute of absolute defiance in victory. As Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Glory Days’ boomed out over the loudspeakers, the stewards and Gardaí which had been keeping the supporters off the field sensed that the mood of the day demanded a release. The barriers came down. The field was stormed.