Over a century on, Clare will hope history repeats itself in Munster final

This year is the first time since 1917 that Clare has reached three successive Munster finals. 108 years ago, they put the lessons of two previous defeats to good use when they put five goals past Cork in the decider. 

Last year, Cusack Park hosted its first Munster SFC final since 1919. This year's game will be the first Kerry v Clare decider in Killarney since 1929. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

In a series of feature articles carried in the Clare Journal newspaper in 1907, Clare football was painted in a very poor light. Losing was a habit but results were irrelevant in the eyes of the authors. The crude methods Clare had adopted to playing the game by ‘going for the man’ were a black stain on the county’s footballing culture.

“What have we gained from our unmanliness?” the question was asked in one of those articles. “Nothing. We have lost everything. Whether we are to go on losing or not depends on ourselves. If we are to field better teams than Clare has done hitherto, we just devote more of our time to science than to brute force.” 

The articles touched a nerve. Something had to change. It did. Within five years Clare had made great strides when reaching their first Munster final. Two late and controversial refereeing decisions denied Clare a famous win as Kerry beat them by two points. Not long afterwards, Clare reached a national final but lost the Croke Cup decider to Dublin. “Clare football is going places,” noted The Saturday Record in 1913.

Four years later, Clare finally travelled to where nobody thought was possible during the early part of the century. After beating Cork to win a first Munster title, Clare overcame Galway in the All-Ireland semi-final before narrowly losing the final to an iconic Wexford team that won the three in-a-row en route to completing the four in-a-row.

That Clare team was a seasoned outfit by then as it was their third successive appearance in a Munster final, having lost the 1915 decider to Kerry before going down to Cork a year later by one point.

By 1917, Clare were more than ready to make up that ground. The most goals any team had scored in any of the previous Munster finals was four, which Kerry managed just once, but Clare drilled five past Cork at the Tipperary Sportsground. The final margin of victory was 18 points.

Clare had moulded a hardened and experienced team together by then, with many of those players also featuring in the 1919 final against Kerry. Clare were well beaten in Cusack Park but that generation had firmly established a successful football tradition in the province.

In the 1920s, Clare reached four Munster finals, with three of those appearances coming in four years between 1924-’27, losing finals in 1924, 1925 and 1926 to Kerry. The closest Clare came to Kerry in that period was the 1926 quarter-final, which they lost by two points in Milltown-Malbay to a Kerry side that went on to defeat Kildare in the All-Ireland final after a replay.

In the decades that followed, Clare were only in a position to reach three successive Munster finals on one other occasion - 1938. Having lost the 1936 and 1937 finals to Kerry, Clare’s hopes were ended again by Kerry in the 1938 quarter-final in Cusack Park.

Clare had become accustomed to losing Munster finals to Kerry anytime they got that far. By the time they played Kerry again in the 1941 decider, it was their tenth defeat to Kerry in a provincial final. The counties didn’t meet again in another Munster final until 1992. The wait was more than worthwhile for Clare as John Maughan’s side recorded a memorable and historic victory by four points.

The defeat cut so deep in Kerry that their tradition demanded that it wouldn’t happen again. Still, when Clare and Kerry next met in the championship, the 1997 Munster final, Kerry were still carrying traces of that traumatic defeat from five years earlier. Kerry only finally broke free in a taut tense game after a superb Pa Laide goal. Kerry won by five points and went on to win the All-Ireland.

Sunday represents Clare’s 20th appearance in a Munster final, a 16th against Kerry. 113 years since that first final meeting, seven of those 14 finals in the intervening years took place at the Gaelic Grounds, a trend that began in 1936 with the Limerick venue hosting all of the following deciders between the counties until last year.

With the Gaelic Grounds unavailable on this weekend last May, Clare decided to toss for the venue, which resulted in Cusack Park hosting its first Munster final since 1919. Sunday’s decider is the first Clare-Kerry Munster final in Killarney since 1929, a game that was played in the Killarney Sportsfield.

This is also the first time since 1917 that Clare have reached three Munster finals in-a-row. After losing the two previous finals back then, Clare put those lessons to good use a third time around.

Over a century on, Clare will hope that history can repeat itself again now.