cant see him being around pal
Ah theyâre still on itâŚand on retrospect, rightly so!
Dead fucking right. Fuck sake no clubman in the country would begrudge them the week. Where were they last night, Clon and Killlaoe direction?
Do they know the delights that the Latin Quarter in Galway has to offer?
Send them down to us BT and weâll show them a good time.
Manys the fine sound minded hurler that entered the Latin Quarter only to leave it with an elevated collar, a list of phone numbers and an ego the size of Florrie McCarthyâs dance-floor.
[SIZE=4]Loughnane hopeful Clare wonât âdisappear like Tippâ[/SIZE]
Wednesday, October 02, 2013
Ger Loughnane has expressed hope All-Ireland champions Clare donât disappear âoff the mapâ as neighbours Tipperary did following their 2010 success.
âWhat we all hope and what we are all very confident of is that we donât become the Tipperary team of 2010 when they won the senior and the U21 and disappeared off the map after that.â
Loughnane believes there will be little time to rest on their laurels with the draws for Championship 2014 being made tomorrow night.
And he knows that one team â and one man in particular â would relish the battle with Clare more than any other.
âThe Black and Amber are still out there. We have beaten Tipperary in an All-Ireland final. We have now beaten Cork in an All-Ireland final. There is one other county and one other man especially, Brian Cody, still in charge â Iâm sure Davy would love to have a crack at Kilkenny while Brian Cody is still there.â
As Clareâs hurling heroes last night paraded the Liam McCarthy cup in John Conlonâs home club of Clonlara, Loughnane described the success as âa new milestone.â
He said: âYou look at Limerick â they are stuck back in 1973. You look at Waterford â they are stuck back in the 1950s. Galway are struck back in the 1980s, Offaly stuck back in the 1990s, now Clare are 2013.
He said: âWe have moved on. We have a new milestone. You need those new milestones, that is what Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary have always had.â
Loughnane said that Clare has revolutionised how hurling is now played, stating that in order to beat their opponents, Clare have had to play an entirely different game.
However he confessed he was uneasy with the short passing strategy which he first saw in the flesh at an underage development game a few years ago.
He said: âI was watching the match with Jim McInerney and I was getting more and more uneasy as the game went on because it was all this short passing and I said to Jim âwhat is going on?â and he told me âthat is the way the game is going to be played from now onâ. I said nothing, but in my own mind coming out I thought this was crazy just like everyone else until we saw the strategy behind it this year.â
Š Irish Examiner Ltd. All rights reserved
Some man:clap:
A load of milk and a blow out tomorrow night at training and theyâll be fine. They are at very high level if fitness.
It just shows you how much the powerbase has shifted in Clare hurling when you see that there was only one club that had a starter on the 1995 A/I winning team and a starter on the Clare team three weeks ago in the drawn A/I final.
East Clare will always be the home of Clare hurlingâŚ
whats the milk for kev?..a few cups of tea with a few spoons of sugar would get a sweat up much quickerâŚ
I watched the game again, given what was at stake and the time of the game he scored, when Clare were in trouble, McGraths is definitely the greatest goal ever scored in an All Ireland final. Possibly the greatest of all time, the way he carved open the Cork defense
his lift to take it away and into space was great bit of skill to open up the defence
If Cork look back on it they will probably think they had two chances to clear it before he broke away
Really?
Nice flick to get the ball into space, but he then ran from the 45 to 13 without anyone even trying to close him down.
[quote=âTreatyStones, post: 840253, member: 1786â]Really?
Nice flick to get the ball into space, but he then ran from the 45 to 13 without anyone even trying to close him down.[/quote]
the skill and pace of his running bamboozled the cark langhers , it only to the greatness of the finish
[SIZE=6]Clareâs balance of power has shifted away from the big beasts of the â90s to smaller clubs today[/SIZE]
[SIZE=5]Coaching from an early age in local schools has raised the fortunes of Clonlara and Cratloe[/SIZE]
Clare manager and former goalkeeper Davy Fitzgerald. Was one of the Sixmilebridge men on the great Banner team of the 1990s that claimed three Munster and two All-Ireland titles in four years. Photo: Lorraine OâSullivan/Inpho
Malachy Clerkin
First published:Sat, Sep 7, 2013, 01:00
[LIST]
[]
[]When St Josephâs Doora-Barefield tripped the light fantastic on St Patrickâs Day 1999 to blow Rathnure away in the final of the All Ireland Club Championship, they automatically became made men. Best club side in Ireland, says so right there on the Tommy Moore Cup.
[/LIST]
It counted for nothing the following winter though.
âThe joke around here,â said then manager Louis Mulqueen as they headed for a secondClare county title on the spin, âis that we only won the All Ireland because we didnât meet Clarecastleâ.
Like all the best jokes, it had plenty of truth in it. Back then, the Clare county championship was the best finishing school in the country. Between 1995 and 2000 the Clare champions each year went on to become the Munster champions.
The Sixmilebridge of Davy Fitz and Mike OâHalloran in 1995, the Shannon Wolfe Tones of the Lohans in â96, Anthony Dalyâs Clarecastle in â97, followed by back-to-back titles for Jamesie OâConnor and SeĂĄnie McMahon et al with Doora-Barefield in â98 and â99.
The era was rounded out by Sixmilebridge in 2000, Davy Fitzgerald still a whirlwind in goal and Niall Gilligan driving the scoreboard up front.
There were the big beasts and then there was everybody else. Two-thirds of the All-Ireland-winning teams of the 1990s came from just those four clubs. The rest were satellites spinning around them.
Run your finger down the pen pics of the team for tomorrow though and the shift in power is bracing. Not one of those four clubs is represented in the starting 15. Of the bench, only Seadna Morey of Sixmilebridge and Jonathan Clancy of Clarecastle fly the flag.
Clonlara[/URL] and [URL=âhttp://www.irishtimes.com/search/search-7.1213540?tag_location=Cratloe&article=trueâ]Cratloe provide almost half the team now between them, with the rest made up of single representatives from eight other clubs.
County final
That two such tiny clubs can be so heavily represented would be impressive even if they both had a long history of success.
But before 2008, they had been in precisely one Clare county final between them â which Clonlara won all the way back in 1919.
So what happened?
Well, life happened for one thing. Clonlara and Cratloe found their population swelling over the course of a couple of decades. In the 1991 census, Clonlara was home to 399 people; by 2011, that number had risen to 627. The equivalent numbers in Cratloe were 510 in 1991 and 674 in 2011. More people, more kids, more seeds for watering.
âA lot of it is down to the primary schools in both villages,â says Peter Casey, a Clare Games Development Officer.
âThe principals of both schools who have now retired â PJ Fitzpatrick in Clonlara and Jodie OâConnor in Cratloe â they would have spent an awful lot of time coaching very young children. They both got in there early and their local clubs got built up on the back of that work.
âA lot of people moved into those areas from outside the locality. There would have been big population growth in both villages and both primary schools have got bigger as a result.
âLife tends to be fair. If you put in the work with young kids, you will see the results 10, 15 years later. Unfortunately, some clubs who find it difficult at minor and under-21 level can nearly always trace it back to a lack of work that was done 10 years previously.â
To rise
Of course, for teams to rise, others must fall. Some of it can be ascribed to the natural cycles of success, dependent as always on the talent available.
Jamesie OâConnor points out that a place like Shannon was coming down with male teachers in the 1980s â including one MĂĄistir Loughnane â and when you add that to someone like Gus Lohan (he of 11 county medals) producing a couple of sons, youâve got circumstances that are difficult to repeat.
But thereâs also an undeniable truth in the fact that the bigger clubs got a little fat and a little lazy on the back of their success.
âI remember Paudie Butler saying that sometimes when clubs are thinking theyâre doing great coaching, in fact itâs the schools doing it for them,â says OâConnor.
âI think certainly ourselves (Doora-Barefield), Clarecastle, Wolfe Tones and Ăire Ăg â the big urban centres in Clare â probably took their eye of the ball. And the work maybe wasnât put in at the formative age groups. Thatâs a big factor.â
Casey agrees, although heâs keen to point out that clubs have been getting their act together all across the county in recent years. Hence the All-Ireland final appearance, obviously.
Great work
âSixmilebridge are doing great work now â they won the under-21 âAâ championship this year and will have three or four players on the Clare team in the next few years. Clarecastle were in the minor final last year and have a very good minor team this year.
âBut thereâs no doubt about it â there would have been complacency in some of the successful clubs for a period of five or six years. There definitely would have been an attitude of, âWeâre always going to keep producing these players by the very fact that we have a tradition.â That has changed and those clubs are on the way back.â
If they are and if the tide keeps rising, Clare will be around for a while. Regardless of what happens tomorrow.
Two and a half clubs actually.
1 OâCallaghanâs Mills - PJ OâConnell/Pat Donnellan
1 Eire Og - Stephen McNamara/Shane OâDonnell
1/2 Inagh-Kilnamona - Fergal Hegarty/Patrick Kelly
[quote=âSidney, post: 840326, member: 183â]Two and a half clubs actually.
1 OâCallaghanâs Mills - PJ OâConnell/Pat Donnellan
1 Eire Og - Stephen McNamara/Shane OâDonnell
1/2 Inagh-Kilnamona - Fergal Hegarty/Patrick Kelly[/quote]
Shane OâDonnell did not feature in the drawn game, hence why I referenced the drawn final. Inagh/Kilnamona did not exist as club back in 1995 and Kilnamona no longer exist
Hence the âhalfâ bit. Is Patrick Kelly Inagh or Kilnamona?
Kilnamona I think. But they would have been amalgamated underage for most of his underage career
He is actually from the metropolis of Inagh.
Heâs from inagh, his father PJ was co board treasurer when clare won AI in '95