IN Feakle they’ve done something like this before.
Long before Eibhear Quilligan and Adam Hogan, Clare and Cork met in a series of other monumental matches.
The 1977 Munster final. The 1978 Munster final. The 1986 Munster final.
Séamus Durack played in goals in both ’77 and ’78, and well enough to win an All-Star each time.
By ’86 he was the manager, with another Feakle man, Fr Harry Bohan, as one of his selectors. That game is remembered for their neighbour Tommy Guilfoyle going for 2-2 (which remains the most any Clare player has scored from play in a Munster final) and still ending up on the losing team.
Playing at No.2 for Clare was Guilfoyle’s old clubmate, Ger Loughnane. For most of his career he had lined out at wing back. It’s where he won his two All-Stars from, played in all four of his previous Munster finals. In ’86, down in Killarney, his fellow Feakle men assigned him to the corner.
All these years on and the same small village in east Clare that produced Clare’s first two All-Stars has again provided its goalie and right corner back to play against Cork in front of a full house.
Probably the person who best knows all four and the town that reared them is Guilfoyle. It’s where he still lives and, 10 years on from managing the club to a county intermediate title which featured Quilligan, he’s still down in the club field most nights, coaching the U9s and U11s.
The first thing he tells you is that not only is there a certain madness to the place — there’d have to be, to throw up such charismatic, strong-minded figures like The Duke and Fr Harry and especially Loughnane — but it’s especially mad about hurling.
“There’s nothing else,” he says. He knows you’ve heard that about other rural areas where it no longer applies but it still holds true for Feakle. “In east Clare it’s all we have.”
Football? Back in Guilfoyle’s playing days, you’d put your hand into the gear bag and whatever was the number of the jersey you pulled, that’s where you played. Now they don’t even enter teams. “I’m actually thinking with the U9s about changing it up and bringing in a bit of football. Maybe play Scarriff for a bit of fun. But I could be shot for doing that!”
The place has tended to produce exceptional hurlers and teams in bursts and batches.
In the late ’60s it brought through Loughnane and Durack; boosted by such future All-Star talent, the club won an intermediate county title in 1973.
By the time they were each playing in their last Munster final, though, Durack was with Éire Óg in Ennis, Loughnane with Wolfe Tones in Shannon. They were living and working in those towns and unlike Feakle those clubs were in contention for senior county championships.
Loughnane’s departure lit a bit of a fire underneath and within those he left behind, Guilfoyle included. Loughnane had coached him at U14, inspired and improved him hugely. By leaving he was indicating that the club hadn’t enough good players around him.
“The year before he went, we got beaten in an U21B semi-final,” Guilfoyle recalls. “But after Loughnane left, lads decided, ‘Feck you, we’re going to play U21A.’
“The next year we won U21A with 12 minors. I had been in goal as a nine-year-old at U14 and conceded 14-11 to Éire Óg. Seven years on it was Éire Óg we beat in that U21A final.”
It was the genesis of another generational team with generational talent. They went on to win four consecutive U21A titles. Ten of them started for the St
Joseph’s Tulla side that won an All-Ireland colleges B title. At one point seven of them were on the Clare minor panel. By 1988 a suitably impressed Loughnane was back, winning a senior county championship with his own.
Durack would return too, decades later, taking the club intermediate side for a season or two. In goal for him was Quilligan, who was just after winning a Munster minor medal in 2011 starting for Clare.
A few years on again, Quilligan himself was coaching and moulding some exceptional talent in Feakle, all the while trying to break onto the Clare senior panel.
In 2017, he and Gary Guilfoyle, Tommy’s son, took the club U21 team which had combined with Killanena and entered the A championship. They made it to the final but were outsiders against an Inagh-Kilnamona side featuring David Fitzgerald and the McCarthy brothers, Aidan and Jason. Feakle won.
Shortly after that campaign, Gary and Quilligan were asked to help out with the U14s. Again they made it to the final. Again they were given little chance of winning it; Sixmilebridge were just coming off playing James Stephens in the national Féile final. Again Feakle-Killanena won.
At full back on that U14 team was the same Adam Hogan that now plays in front of Quilligan with Clare. Their paths and personalities vastly differ.
“From day one it was as if Adam was destined,” says Guilfoyle. At the Tony Forristal tournament he astounded everyone with his pace, cut, hurling. When Gary was coaching the club U14s with Quilligan that same year, he told his father that he could see Hogan winning an All-Star before he was 21.
Last year, while still U20, Hogan was nominated for young hurler of the year. This year he’s already won the Fitzgibbon, its player of the competition, the national league… Quilligan had to grind for everything. But that’s probably what Brian Lohan liked about him. He had to wait until he was 27 to make his first championship start with Clare — which was also Lohan’s first championship game in charge.
“I texted Eibhear when the team was picked,” recalls Guilfoyle. “‘It’s what you’ve always wanted and it’s what you had to work for.’
“He never started at U21 but never complained. He just kept his mouth shut and kept working and went away and got some private goalkeeping. He’d have also picked up quite a bit from Davy [Fitzgerald] playing with LIT. His preparation is top notch.”
Such is his interest in sports nutrition, he now works in the field as a business development manager for ABC, based a little outside Cratloe.
Guilfoyle has seen him down on the club field working out and working with his backup, Liam O’Connor, and the club minor keeper. Their sessions are intense, rapid, purposeful, tailored to transfer into performance.
A couple of years ago, around the time Hogan was called up to the senior panel and already a name around the county, Guilfoyle, in the company of a couple of his old teammates that won the county in ’88, met him up at the club field. “When Adam moved on, one of the lads asked who was that I had been talking to. They didn’t know and couldn’t believe it was Adam Hogan because he could have passed for 15.”
The babyface is a killer though. Hogan comes from good stock, farming stock. His father, Michael, but known to everyone as Stokey, was on that team in ’88 with Loughnane and Guilfoyle that won the county. His mother, Ruth, is a daughter of the late Phelim Murphy who was Galway county secretary and a selector back when Cyril Farrell was winning All Irelands.
Guilfoyle met Stokey coming out of Croke Park after the Kilkenny game. “He told me that Ruth had fallen and broken her ankle the other week. ‘But it’s a good omen,’ he says. ‘I says, ‘How’s it a good omen?!’ He says, ‘I broke my leg in ’95!’” He was there that year. Ruth will be there this year. Adam’s uncle, Martin, is even coming back from Australia for it.
FEAKLE is like many other places in rural Ireland. The population is dwindling. People leave. Guilfoyle looks at his own family. His brother Michael, who won with Feakle and hurled with Clare, is now in Doora-Barefield where his two sons play. He has three nephews playing for Bodyke. Their brother John has three lads playing with Newmarket. When you’ve smaller numbers, you invariably have to play at C in some grades and combine forces with your neighbours and once rivals.
Still, the place has a heartbeat. And these days its heart is bursting out of its chest. The U21s, with Hogan starring alongside his friends from Killanena, won the A county championship last year. The seniors reached the county semi-final and hope to go a step or two further in the next year or two. On Sunday they will have three players heading to Dublin: Con Smyth is on the extended panel.
The Thursday after the Kilkenny game, the town was a hive of activity: People and teleporters and ladders everywhere. The club and the community council had put out the word: Let’s have a tidy up and get the bunting and flags up because Marty will be down for Up for the Match.
“With the other All-Irelands, we had no player involved. Yes, they were great, and obviously Loughnane was over the team in ’95 and ‘97 and we were very proud. But for the kids to see three players from their own club involved in a team playing in the All Ireland is magical.
“People are coming home from everywhere for it. And they’re meeting up in the club field. That’s where it’s at now in Feakle. I’m training the young lads and the mothers will be walking the trek around the field. The fathers will be around too. Everyone.”
Hogan and Quilligan, no doubt, will be there as well. Back on the same field that gave birth to Durack and Loughnane.
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