Clare Gaa 🐐 Thread mark II

Sport
6124

Yes - was a minor in 2020. He was on the age for the under 20s this year.

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6125

Thanks very much.

Was pretty certain. But wanted to be certain.

6126

A little over a year ago, as four years studying and working in America were coming to an end and he planned a relocation back to Ireland, Conor Ryan began to detect a difference in his body. A welcome difference.

For almost five years he had been forced to park high-level sport with the Clare hurlers and Cratloe senior teams because of a pituitary gland issue that, quite literally, had robbed him of his power.

And for Ryan, power and effort, translated into leadership, were what made him what he was.

What Tony Kelly, Shane O’Donnell and Podge Collins had in spades Ryan didn’t, but he was able to compensate in different ways. He understood those terms and conditions. They brought the best out of him.

For three years he poured everything into it, scaling large peaks but then he hit a wall. Like kryptonite to Superman.

As quickly as it had illuminated, Ryan’s burgeoning career at the highest level had been extinguished. After two years of rest and reset in an effort to get to the bottom of what was restricting him, it came down to a fundamental question.

“It wasn’t, ‘Will I ever do this again’, it was, ‘Will I get to the level I need to, to help Clare win All-Irelands, to help Cratloe win Clare titles’,” he recalls.

“And the answer was, ‘Well on the evidence of the last two years, probably not but never say never.’ I didn’t want to hang on to a minuscule chance so I said, ‘This is it now, fine.’ I wanted to attack other parts of my life and I didn’t want it hanging over me as a maybe.”

So he stopped completely in 2018, detailing his condition and predicament in a jarring Sunday Independent interview. Another 2013 Clare All-Ireland winner gone before his time.

“The analogy was that you are trying to drive a car up the hill with the handbrake on. I’d like to say I made my peace with it very quick,” he recalls. “I probably didn’t. I found it tough going to games, the hardest part was leaving the Clare panel and that was also the first year my brother Diarmuid was called into the extended training panel.

“It was like a revolving door, I always felt Clare and Cratloe upgraded in terms of the Ryan model. They got rid of the old model. He’s gone on to a have a few great years with Clare.”

Except with Ryan there has been a sequel. Training and keeping some level of fitness, good habits of a lifetime, remained important to him during his time away, even if his body didn’t react as it should.

But as his time in New York was coming to an end 12 months ago he felt subtle change.

“I started to notice the body was reacting, I was starting to feel fitter and stronger so I really leaned in,” he recalls. “I think it was time, understanding giving the body enough rest between things.

“Time is important when I look back. I started giving myself a bit of a break, in terms of not overthinking things too much, not putting pressure on the body as much.”

Back at home last January he wanted to put his own assessment to the test medically. He visited PĂĄraic Quinn, the GP who had been so pivotal in making an early diagnosis that something was amiss in 2016, for a blood test that confirmed his good senses.

“The bloods were better than ever, no more medication, back to 100pc. At the end of the day, hurling and football aside, health is everything.”

It’s everything, but hurling and football is a lot too, especially in Cratloe where their near-symmetrical commitment to football and hurling yielded a unique double in 2014 which, to this day, Ryan describes as his most cherished achievement.

Inevitably, the question of a return then was broached in almost every conversation.

“And I always replied, ‘Jesus that’s in the past.’ But I’d be the first to admit I was Training away in the background trying to get fit, that’s where my head was at.”
And so began one of the most unexpected comebacks in 2023. Ryan, short-circuited at the peak of his career, putting his shoulder to the wheel to help Cratloe regain the Clare football title in October carries strong resonance.
Initially, he focused on hurling and there were injuries to curtail him but an early exit shifted focus to the Colm Collins-managed footballers.
“We lost to Clooney-Quin in the hurling and the next night I went up to Seán, Podge and David Collins and they just threw me a football and said, ‘This is the next one now.
“I forgot how much I really enjoyed playing football. It was a great year, you couldn’t have scripted it better but it was never about me. Cratloe would be county football champions without me, that team is just a special group of lads. I was just lucky to tag along for the ride.”
The other motivating factor for Ryan was the prospect of playing with his younger brother for the first time. More than eight years separates them and up to this summer they had never even trained together.
“I grew up wanting to put a hurl in his hand, when I was nine or 10 and he was a baby in a pram. I was mad about hurling.
“His is a different generation, but I love training with the younger lads and learning off them. My best friends in the world are still training and playing away.”
Ryan is happy to tell his story in the knowledge that some young man or woman may well be out there suffering from the same loss of power and energy that he experienced over a period of a few years.
His last Clare involvement had come in a 2017 Munster League game against Cork on a late January night in Sixmilebridge.
Having sat out 2016, this felt like a big pitch to recovery but by half-time he was being advised by the new management duo, under whom he had won an All-Ireland U-21 title in 2012, that they were giving him “a break.”
“If you’re trying to get back and put your name out there as a fella who is coming back, Conor Lehane is not the fella you want to be marking to do that. He took me for a run-around in the ‘Bridge that night.
“You know when you are U-12 and U-14 and the manager doesn’t want to hurt your feelings and they said, ‘Look, we’re giving you a break’. That should never happen in an inter-county dressing-room but, to be fair to Donal (Moloney) and Gerry (O’Connor), it was clear to everyone there, I just couldn’t get to the standard.”
He reset again and later that year, he was back in another county football final, struggling again.

“When I look back on clips of the match, it just looks like a different person. You could see there was no power, there was no pace, no energy. I’m surprised Colm Collins even put me in the team,” he reflects.
The diagnosis of a poorly functioning pituitary gland, the ‘master’ gland as it is known with its responsibility for hormone release, got him thinking. Had he been pushing it too hard? Had the intoxication of winning All-Ireland U-21 and senior titles in successive years and then that Cratloe double “fed the beast” as he put it?
“You’re after having a few really great years and then, all of a sudden, you set that personal expectation that you need to be winning and you need to be driving it along. You are seen as a leader now, it does create a really heightened sense of expectation.
“When you win in your first year, that becomes the benchmark for every year and that’s something that when you start setting really unrealistic expectations, it can become all-encompassing.
“I put more pressure on myself than anyone could normally, I regret nothing about it. I was never the most talented, never the most skilful, what I had was the ability to be fit and to be a leader on a team and because that was my perception, I knew I needed to push hard and needed to be seen to be training hard. So when I lost that strength and power, that leadership, I felt I lost my reason for being on teams. That was disheartening enough.
“The energy levels weren’t where they needed to be and I found it very hard just to have no drive, aggression, strength, power, that’s just not on the field of play. All of a sudden your superpower is gone, mentally I found it very hard.
“I have theories now but never medical proof that it was anything that I did. I hate to put it on that because anything medical is very individual and is very hard to put a reasoning behind it and I would be reluctant to. But all I know is that I probably wasn’t looking after myself as much as I should have been.
“I was very hard on myself. There were times where if I played a bad game I wouldn’t be right for a week whereas now there is a much healthier perspective on life when it comes to sport and GAA.”
The drive he has had on a GAA pitch is mirrored throughout his business career. He studied civil engineering in UL but realised near the end it wasn’t for him and switched to a Master’s in finance instead, starting that on the day after he was named man of the match in the drawn 2013 All-Ireland final.
For four years he worked with Davy Stockbrokers in Galway, spent six months with the GPA working on the Fenway Classic and then got accepted for a Denis O’Brien-sponsored scholarship to Boston College where he did a Master’s in business administration for two years. An internship in IBM in New York followed where he met a Corkman, Flor Brosnan, who provided good guidance that lead to a full-time position in mergers and acquisition.
The move home still requires trips back to America on a regular basis and he works on US time.
For all the restriction that a “burnt-out” pituitary gland brought, Ryan sees himself shrouded in only good fortune, however.
“My whole life, when I look on it, I have been in the right place at the right time so many times that I think I have used up all my good luck charms at this point of my life and I am only 32. It was just one of those things.”
It struck the older sibling that when he and his younger brother went in for the throw-in to start the second half of their Munster Championship defeat to Castlehaven he had come “full circle.”
“For my parents to see their two sons jumping for the ball, losing it, mind you!” he laughed. “I’ve caught the bug again. It’s not, ‘One and done and let’s set sail into the sunset’.
“It’s the most addictive feeling in the world and I have tried for the last six years to replicate that buzz and energy in my professional life. Do I enjoy what I do, do I get excitement from it, absolutely? But that full-time whistle the day of the county final, that’s just something that can’t be replicated.”

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6127

Has the Win a House in Ennis draw been pushed back by a month?

Ennis a little less glamorous than Lahinch I suppose. Sales must be bad.

6128

8000 or so tickets sold. They sold 12k for lahinch.

Like you say Lahinch would have more appeal, think they also errored having it so soon after the last one.

6129

Is the Galway one pushed back as well?

6130

Do ye think the price being reduced to €50 would’ve equalled over double in sales? Technically with admin etc they’d have needed more than double what they’ve sold for the €100 tickets but I’d wonder really.

€100 is a tough amount to stomach

6131

I agree on it being too soon, or at least the identical style competition being too soon anyway rather than something different. The bombardment of ads can become tiresome.

6132

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6133

Listening to Tommy Rooney on OTB, footballers have been wiped out from last season. Big transition from the very settled side Colm collins had the last 5 seasons

6134

There’s a massive gap there alright now, most of that squad now is 25 and under. There is a fair few that have been blooded but will still have a physical deficit to make up

6135

Yeah the retirements themselves are one thing but losing lads who’d be in their prime of about 26ish like Keelan Sexton and Pierce Lillis is a massive blow. They’ll do well to stay in Division 3 at this rate.

6136

Clare SH v Limerick
E Foudy

J Conneally
C Leen
P Flanagan

D Lohan
C Smyth
C Galvin

D Conroy
D Ryan

C O’Meara
D Reidy
S Meehan

K Smyth
M Rodgers
D Cahill

6137

Team v Cork

Clare’s full squad is as follows:

  1. Cian Broderick (Clarecastle)

  2. David Tuohy (Clarecastle)

  3. Conor Cleary (St Joseph’s Tulla)

  4. Seadna Morey (Sixmilebridge)

  5. Oran Cahill (Éire Óg)

  6. Dylan McMahon (Clonlara)

  7. Tadhg Dean (Crusheen)

  8. Aidan Moriarty (Clonlara)

  9. Cathal Malone (Sixmilebridge)

  10. Keelan Hartigan (Scariff)

  11. Cian Barron (St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield)

  12. Killian O’Connor (Corofin)

  13. Gearoid Sheedy (Ogonnelloe)

  14. Aidan McCarthy (Inagh-Kilnamona)

  15. Robin Mounsey (Ruan)

  16. Eibhear Quilligan (Feakle)

  17. Ross Hayes (Crusheen)

  18. Oisin O’Donnell (Crusheen)

  19. Conn Smyth (Feakle)

  20. Paddy Donnellan (Broadford)

  21. Keith Smyth (Killanena)

  22. Eanna Crimmins (Newmarket-om-Fergus)

  23. Colm O’Meara (Clonlara)

  24. Diarmuid Cahill (Corofin)

  25. Jack Kirwan (Parteen-Meelick)

  26. Steven Conway (Feakle

6138

Jeez he is carrying some panel. A few of them showed well the other night. Smyth and Connelly especially.

6139

55 or so in at the minute. He has turned over a lot of rocks since he got the gig.

Was disappointed with Leen the other night - he was a lad I thought might make an impact but was cleaned. Be interesting to see if he gets another shot.

6140

You’d think in Year 5 he knows what’s what and only needs to add one or two to the 26 for the year. Some waste of money paying expenses to 55 players even for a couple of months.

These competitions are some box ticking exercise in fairness though with the Dublin Footballers sending out a team of nobodies tomorrow in O’Byrne Cup when everyone knows what the Dublin 26 will look like in July.

6141

In fairness with the proximity to the national league and provinical championships - its still a nonsense exercise but an opportunity at the same time for players to put up their hand for selection all the same be it in the 26 or the starting team in the league.

6142

Realistically he has a core group of 17 or 18. Unearthing two new lads to break into the 20 could be the difference between a relatively successful year and disappointing year.
He got Stephen O’Halloran in 2020, Paudi Fitz in 2021, Cian Nolan and Robyn Mounsey in 2022, Darragh Lohan in 2023 all making positive contributions in championship hurling from pretty much nowhere when other managers and people in the county wouldn’t have even considered them.

There is also a player development aspect and medium term thinking too. A lot of the newer lads are 19 to 22 bracket and no harm to expose them to a couple of months of winter training to see who has a bit of pluck about them.

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6143

Dessie doing some trolling of Scully with that squad :rofl::rofl: