I think they won it when Eoin Kelly was playing with them.
Clare Senior hurling championship gets underway this weekend. Championship restructuring was put back a year due to Clareâs run last season so this will be the last year of the 20 team Senior championship.
Top two from the three Senior A groups and the top side from the 2 Senior B groups will make the quarters
Group 1
Ballyea V Clonlara
Clooney-Quinn V Inagh-Kilnamona
Group 2
Sixmilebridge V Crusheen
Cratloe V Kilmaley
Group 3
Newmarket on Fergus V Tulla
Tubber V Clarecastle
Senior B Hurling
Group 2A
Ruan V Wolfe Tones
Whitegate V Eire Og
Group 2B
Scarriff V Oâ Callaghans Mills
Broadford VSt. Josephs-Doora Barefield
Some upsetting news out of Clare this morning.
Whats that Elvis?
Clonlara laid down a big marker today against Ballyea, winning 3-22 to 1-16. Scored 3-15 in the second half
Crusheen beat defending champions Sixmilebridge by a goal. Means that the 'Bridge will have to beat Cratloe to get out of the group
Big wins for Newmarket and Cratloe as well.
Jack Browne had a big game for Ballyea at full back despite the defence crumbling all around him. Tough bit of stuff.
Shane OâDonnellâs hamstring gone again.
Cousin I think and making claims about him being better than colm at this stage is plain stupid and pressure he can do without
Who will be starting in place of him now that it is likely he wonât be back in time?
Cunningham and leave him in space?
Hopefully he is now given enough time to recover properly and not rushed back for the 21âs or the Cork/Waterford match.
We do have options for both teams to replace him. Honan is the obvious one but if he isnât fully fit or on form you could have the likes of Cunnigham or a slight rejig to accommodate either Duggan
DAMIAN LAWLOR â UPDATED 18 MAY 2014 11:44 AM
[SIZE=5]When Davy Fitzgeraldâs term with Waterford ended in late 2011 he was always going to walk straight into the Clare job, and with it a set-up that was the pride of the county and envy of the country.[/SIZE]
Fitzgerald had started coaching at 17 but this was the role he had always dreamed of. âFor the first eight or ten years I thought I was a savage coach,â he laughed. âBut I wasnât.â
Over the next 15 years, he coached teams to 24 titles, not just at club, college and inter-county hurling, but also camogie and Gaelic football. He took on an ageing Waterford side, changed their style and led them to an All-Ireland final. In 2010, they won a Munster title. It was a good innings and he was the best qualified to get the Clare senior gig when it arose.
In 2012, his first year, he used six of the under 21s. In 2013, there were 20 kids on the extended panel. Very soon Fitzgeraldâs senior team started looking like a Fitzgibbon Cup side, its average age 22. Only Brendan Bugler and Pat Donnellan were older than that average but those two were ravenous for success.
It looked like a dream ticket from the start. The retention of Paul Kinnerk from the underage set-up ensured continuity and was perhaps Fitzgeraldâs smartest move. A top coach in his own right, he deferred to the Limerick man, whose effectiveness with the youngsters he had witnessed.
The 2012 season was full of ups and downs, and fate pitted him against Waterford. Clare lost by two points, dropped to the qualifiers and beat Dublin at home before losing to Limerick in phase three. âThere was unrest at that stage,â admitted Louis Mulqueen, one of Fitzgeraldâs selectors. âMost of it was on our own doorstep too. People questioned us and the way we played. A few even wanted us gone out the road after just a year. Can you believe that?â
Fitzgerald thinks of one league game that year. His young team were losing and seemed caught between two game plans. There was short passing â and shorter passing. The crowd were roaring at the manager to press the reset button: âFuck off, Fitzgerald! You have Clare ruined!â
But apart from letting up slightly on the short-passing game, Fitzgerald wasnât for changing. Mulqueen and the rest of the backroom reassured him he was doing the right thing.
Fitzgerald and Mulqueen have always been competitive but close. They hop off each other. One Christmas Eve, Mulqueen beat his old rival in a game of squash. On Christmas Day, Fitzgerald knocked at Mulqueenâs door looking to level the score over a game of racquetball. And he wouldnât take no for an answer.
âDavy just needed time to get the new style going at senior level,â said Mulqueen. âWe had guys like Brendan Bugler who had been used to different tactics â and 17-point hammerings against the likes of Tipp â so we had to try and combine the older lads with a group of youngsters who knew nothing but close control and success and had no fear of anyone: Kilkenny, Tipp, no one. That process took time.â
It wasnât until the middle of the 2013 championship that they took off. An average league saw them just about avoid relegation and weeks later they were beaten by Cork in the Munster semi-final.
Once more the pressure came on Fitzgerald, who called a meeting in his home on the day after that game. Much was made of the chat they had over MiWadi and Goldgrain biscuits. Again, like the videos of players training at 5.0am on Christmas Eve, that house session is one of the propaganda snapshots that has become part of the popular narrative.
But Fitzgerald is adamant it was the turning point in their season: âI just knew from them coming to my house and the attitude they left with that we would drive on. Like, we were creating huge chances in games and we werenât as bad as we were made out to be. I told them we were being flaked to the hilt by people, but we would drive on.â
They met Wexford in the qualifiers and led by five points with five minutes remaining, but somehow were left feeling for a faint championship heartbeat as Wexford got a surge of oxygen and almost stole the game. The whistle sounded to signal a draw and extra-time. The notoriously excitable Fitzgerald had worked hard during the season on controlling his emotions and paying close attention to the heart monitor he wears, but he was stunned not to have won: "I was rattled but I never felt out of control. I had a lot of work done on myself over the year and worked on staying calm.
âThe way it is, over a 75-minute game Iâm seen on RTĂ for maybe two minutes and Iâm judged as being a lunatic. But look, I have to accept that for what it is. The heart monitor tells where I am and that night against Wexford I just needed to show the lads we were still in control even though Wexford had the wind in their sails.â
He took a few moments to compose himself before entering the dressing room. Clare had been showboating, going for goals instead of taking their points, and in a few skelps of the hurley Wexford had almost made them pay.
But Fitzgerald reckoned this was no time for smashing the furniture: âI just went in and challenged them. I had an idea what was in them but now I wanted to find out. Wexford had finished with 1-1 and had all the momentum; we were in shock. I needed something to get our focus back. I told them that if we overcame Wexford, with all the momentum they had, and turned around a situation like that, we would win the All-Ireland.â The players dusted themselves down, went back out, got two early goals and buried the game for once and for all. First part of the plan achieved.
Louis Mulqueen reckoned their season took off from there: âWe were not as free-flowing as we would have liked until the midsummer. Suddenly we got a run of games: Laois, Wexford, Galway. Beating Galway was a massive shot in the arm â they had taken Kilkenny to an All-Ireland final replay just ten months earlier. It was huge.â
Ahead of their All-Ireland semi-final clash with Limerick, Ger Canning of RTĂ remarked to Mulqueen on the âhuge crowdâ Limerick had brought â as the Croke Park attendance swelled, the green and white outnumbered the saffron and blue three to one. But Mulqueen was undaunted. âA huge crowd to go home disappointed, Ger,â he replied.
It wasnât out of arrogance he said it, merely a rock-solid conviction that the team would not be beaten. Standing in the centre of the pitch, Mulqueen looked at his watch: six minutes till the teams would join the pre-match parade. He juggled two sliotars as he gazed around at the crowd of 62,000 that had turned up for this local derby.
Tony Kelly jogged past.
âTheyâre all here to see you, Tony,â said Mulqueen. Unruffled, Kelly paused, glanced up at the stands and replied, âI know. Give us a ball there, will you?â
The 19-year-old took three steps, curved the sliotar over the bar and went on to hit four points from play as the game unfolded. Mulqueen wasnât surprised: âTony and the boys accepted they were there to perform and entertain. They were doing keepy-uppies in the middle of the field before the game. Sure he was full of jinks and sidesteps the same day. Pressure was just the norm.â
Reaching the All-Ireland final, especially with Kilkenny out of the way, gave them a golden opportunity, one they might not see for a while again. Getting ready for Cork was all about one thing: surprising the opposition. They had played with a sweeper system all year, and Cork worked hard on counteracting that. But at the start of the year Fitzgerald had unveiled six game plans and the squad had worked diligently on each one, trying various tactics in challenge and league games.
By the end of the 2013 season, Fitzgerald had deployed four of those systems â the seventh defender; the out-and-out sweeper; the man marker; and all-out attack with the aim of three quickfire passes culminating in a shot at the posts â and in the All- Ireland final he was widely expected to pack his defence and batten down the hatches. But instead he sprang a surprise, a "shackles-offâ style whereby the players were given licence to attack space. There would be no sweeper for the biggest game of the year.
He had trusted his men in extra-time against Wexford and they hadnât let him down. So now he would give them their heads from the start. They would go all-out. Cork arrived in Croke Park expecting an intense, compact, tactical arm-wrestle.
Instead, they got caught up in a shoot-out. To those outside the loop it was a massive risk to change tack so late in the day, but Fitzgerald didnât see it that way: "The lads are that comfortable they can play to any of the six plans at short notice because we have the work done. I knew weâd be grand.
âThe backroom staff were brilliant in coming on board with that change too, but I surround myself with ambitious people who want to win. We challenged each other on it but we went with it.â
Fitzgerald has a huge entourage and listens to them all, but he makes the ultimate call. Mulqueen has seen both the public Davy Fitz and the private one and would confirm there are vast differences. What is leaked into the public domain is often deliberate: "People saw videos and pictures of the cosmetic stuff we had done â running up Carrauntoohil and the like â and probably thought there was a lunatic doing caveman running.
"But itâs so sophisticated and people donât see the half of it. We had lots more done than that, all with the ball and all involving mental toughness. We had been in the gym at five some mornings and we would be looking through the playersâ logs seeing if they had recorded what they ate for breakfast at 4.30, as they were supposed to.
âThat was about mental toughness. We had Cork on the rack, for instance, but didnât put them away. When they came back and led by a point, that was where we had to demonstrate what we had learned during the year.â
At the end of a thrilling finale Patrick Horgan had given Cork a one-point edge. Time was officially up. Fitzgerald was pleading for one more minute: âI just wanted one more chance, one more attack. I knew if we got that we would muster up another shot. I was so proud of how we didnât panic when we got the ball again. Three passes and a shot. Then I saw Dunny [DĂłmhnall OâDonovan] shooting, all the way up from corner-back, and I got weak at the knees. It flew over and I just thanked God. But Dunny is a cool customer â thereâs not much to rattle him.â
In a deflated dressing room, Fitzgerald asked the team three questions about how they coped with the opposition and certain tactical demands. He hasnât revealed what they were but said the playersâ answers transformed their outlook. They had been almost inconsolable after losing the lead.
Within 30 minutes they were buoyant again. It prompted the manager to make yet another big call: âI let them have a few drinks that night. They had only one night of drinking all year long and it may have been a gamble to let them off the hook at that stage, but I wanted to show I trusted them. We went back to the Clyde Court Hotel, did the banquet, and then they went off to prepare for the under 21 final.â
Aside from cruising past Antrim in that under 21 final, the players did nothing for the next three weeks except to stay limber and sharp. But Fitzgerald and his management had another huge move in the pipeline. From the first night he came in for trials against Waterford at UL in the winter of 2012 when he hit two goals, Shane OâDonnell had been earmarked for a likely role in any September showdown.
They remarked when they first saw him how goals won finals. For most of the 2013 league he played a lone ranger role up front and struggled to hold form. He slipped out of the first 15 after they beat Wexford, but two weeks before the All-Ireland final replay, in an A v B game, he grabbed two quickfire goals. So did Pat Donnellan, from centre-back. In fact, the A team had posted 8-9 after 21 minutes in what was supposed to be a 40-minute game. Fitzgerald, aware they might peak too early, called time.
That was the night they knew OâDonnell was ready. They decided Darach Honan would miss out for the replay. Cork had done well against Honan in the drawn game and Fitzgerald suspected they would be better prepared for him next time: "It was a hard thing to do, telling Darach he was out â and Iâll be honest, he didnât take it great â but sure what would you expect?
âStill, we always say that one fella can pull the whole thing down, and to be fair to Darach he got on with it.â By the 19th minute of the replay OâDonnell had three goals scored. And the manager knew what would follow: "Cork were going to come back at us. We had that drilled into the boys. And they did. They scored two goals in one half of an All-Ireland final. Thatâs another reason why Iâm so proud of those lads â thereâs not many teams could ship three goals in an All-Ireland final and still be standing at the end.â
Not until Honan came off the bench and nailed their fifth goal could Fitzgerald relax in the certainty they would win: "It was only when that goal went in â relief coursed through me. People had wondered why I dropped Darach but Shane scored 3-3 and Darach got the goal that won the All-Ireland. I knew in my heart I had made the right decision.
"Were we in control?â Fitzgerald asked. "Yeah. Were we the better team? I would say so. But they kept coming back. We just couldnât put them away.
"They took a lot of kicks along the way. I took a lot of kicks but it was fucking worth it to say that we stuck the long road. Fuck everyone else!
âBefore the game we looked each other in the eye. We knew weâd be okay.â
They were okay. And as an epoch-making season ended, they looked in better shape than anyone.
Clare hurlers intend staying ahead of the pack by appointing a strength and conditioning coach for their underage sides.
A panel including Davy Fitzgerald have recently conducted interviews with a number of candidates for the position.
The successful one will be charged with supervising the dietary and fitness plans for all the countyâs panels from U14 to U17.
In todayâs Irish Examiner Championship 2014 supplement, Clareâs games promotion officer Sean Chaplin reveals they might not have got the go-ahead for the position if the county didnât win last yearâs All-Ireland title.
âWe wouldnât have been able to advertise for it. There will be liaisoning with [senior team head of fitness and nutrition] Joe OâConnor and Davy. Joe is integral to everything that we do. Although he wouldnât be hands on with the minors and U21s, he would have meetings with them and lay out the platform for the players.
âThe person in place will be supervising our development squads and ensuring they are prepared from a dietary and fitness perspective so that by the time they become minors and U21s theyâll be aware of what is required in areas such as nutrition, hydration and sleep. When they go to college or leave home they will know what food to buy and how to help their hurling careers as much as possible. Education is going to be a huge thing.
âOther counties are doing things their own way but not too many would be doing this on a full-time basis. We will have somebody in charge of creating a portfolio of every player from the minute they come into our squads at 14 until the time they hopefully become seniors. At every stage, managers will be able to see what the players have done.â
The initiative comes as Fitzgerald, whose term as manager has been extended until 2017, aims to build on their 2013 success.
Fuxake Davy will be enforcing a drinking ban for all the underage teams next.
AKA âEast German Style doping Chiefâ.
drinking ban in clare, supermacs ban in limerick. we all do things our own way i suppose.
[QUOTE=âchewy louie, post: 947972, member: 1137â]Clare hurlers intend staying ahead of the pack by appointing a strength and conditioning coach for their underage sides.
A panel including Davy Fitzgerald have recently conducted interviews with a number of candidates for the position.
The successful one will be charged with supervising the dietary and fitness plans for all the countyâs panels from U14 to U17.
In todayâs Irish Examiner Championship 2014 supplement, Clareâs games promotion officer Sean Chaplin reveals they might not have got the go-ahead for the position if the county didnât win last yearâs All-Ireland title.
âWe wouldnât have been able to advertise for it. There will be liaisoning with [senior team head of fitness and nutrition] Joe OâConnor and Davy. Joe is integral to everything that we do. Although he wouldnât be hands on with the minors and U21s, he would have meetings with them and lay out the platform for the players.
âThe person in place will be supervising our development squads and ensuring they are prepared from a dietary and fitness perspective so that by the time they become minors and U21s theyâll be aware of what is required in areas such as nutrition, hydration and sleep. When they go to college or leave home they will know what food to buy and how to help their hurling careers as much as possible. Education is going to be a huge thing.
âOther counties are doing things their own way but not too many would be doing this on a full-time basis. We will have somebody in charge of creating a portfolio of every player from the minute they come into our squads at 14 until the time they hopefully become seniors. At every stage, managers will be able to see what the players have done.â
The initiative comes as Fitzgerald, whose term as manager has been extended until 2017, aims to build on their 2013 success.[/QUOTE]
@caoimhaoin Made for you
In the right county itâs made for me.
Somewhere like Galway Iâd love. A live for the game, untapped talent but old school attitude.
It will happen too.
Clare beat Dublin 3-19 to 2-18 this evening in a challenge match in Ennis
Ye are finished⌠Limerick put 5-18 past this lot last week.
Everybodyâs beating Dublin lately. That will continue on June 14th.