Challenging times for Clare in hurling’s bold new era

When Ger Loughnane brought out his book 18 years ago, he had the whole pick of Ireland to launch it for him. Well, we’ll qualify that a bit — given how relations were with the great Feakle man at the time, the likes of Eamonn Cregan, Gerald McCarthy, and Liz Howard might have declined such an unlikely invite.

But you get the picture. He could have picked almost any celebrity, like the national football manager of the time Mick McCarthy or, as the book was called Raising The Banner, his own ‘Captain Fantastic’, Anthony Daly who, over a decade later, would ask Loughnane to launch his.