Enright: Cratloe will be ready this time

IT’S a scene replicated everywhere in Ireland, new clubs coming to the fore in county finals.

Tomorrow’s Clare SHC finalists, Clonlara and Cratloe, aren’t as well known as some of the big hitters in the Banner, but Cratloe clubman Jim Enright can fill in the background to both.

“Cratloe is a small parish about six miles from Limerick on the Ennis road,” says Enright, “Clonlara is about six miles from Limerick on the Killaloe road. They’re separated by the parish of Parteen-Meelick.

“Both clubs have benefited from a building boom in recent years. There’s a friendly rivalry because, I suppose, neither club was too successful until recently. Clonlara won the intermediate championship two years ago and won the Clare SHC as rank outsiders last year.

“But Cratloe put Clonlara down from the senior grade in a play-off in 2004. We’ve been building well too, but we’re also strong in football, winning the Clare intermediate championship, which would be unusual enough for an east Clare side. But we’ve got west Clare people moving in here, and they brought their football boots with them.”

The winners play Ballygunner in the Munster Club championship: having won their county title last year, Clonlara may take a keen interest in testing themselves on the provincial stage, says Enright, while Cratloe are playing in the Munster intermediate club football championship against St Patrick’s of Limerick tomorrow week, so they’re guaranteed provincial action.

All of which is not to say that the traditional powers in Clare hurling are gone for good, of course... “I wouldn’t be saying that Clarecastle are gone, or St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield,” says Enright.

“They’re not, they’re just in a bit of transition at the moment, while we’re coming up. Clonlara have been particularly impressive at underage in the last couple of years, and you could trace that to a national school principal down there, PJ Fitzpatrick. He won an All-Ireland club medal with Sixmilebridge and he’s been very good for them.

“We have a lot to thank our national school for as well, as well as the influx of some outstanding people who have come to live in the parish — the likes of Joe McGrath of Toomevara and Colm Collins and Arthur Murphy of Kilmihil. Marvellous people. For instance, I’d say of the 32 on the Cratloe panel, only 10 of them have parents who were born in the parish.”

The six miles’ distance means the clubs’ members don’t usually meet. Enright points out that if Clare were playing a game in Limerick or Thurles then the Clonlara lads head home past Corbally and St Munchin’s College, while Cratloe men take the Ennis Road, past the Gaelic Grounds.

Going back to the 70s, however, the two clubs played in an amalgamation, St Senan’s, when Newmarket were dominating the county scene. In 1972 Cratloe, Clonlara, Parteen and Killaloe amalgamated, and following a fractious series of games which saw clubs thrown out and games abandoned, St Senan’s were invited to contest the county final to complete the championship.

They weren’t ready then, as Enright points out, and they lost to Newmarket. They’ll be ready tomorrow, though.