The only person responsible for the demise of Davy is Clare is Davy.
He deserves huge praise for delivering the 2013 all ireland and rightly. Clare got better and better as the summer went on and he got a lot of the tactical battles and match ups right. It was an excellent managerial achievement given the age profile of the group.
But if he deserves the lions share of the credit for the A/I victory he also deserves the lions share for his own downfall in Clare. As i said on another thread at the weekend he could have had a Mickey Harte style run in Clare if he was able to reign himself but he couldnât. He had bags of goodwill in September 2013 and it was gone by the spring of 2015.
He won an All Ireland with a team which had just won their second all ireland under 21 title and would also win the 2014 title. Donal Moloney and Gerry OâConnor were running an excellent set up and providing Davy with great raw materials to work with. He had an innovative coach in Paul Kinnerk and Joe OâConnor doing S&C. Clare started the 2014 league on fire and it was all motoring very well but yet after every game Davy would tell us that Clare were still weeks behind everyone else. A number of incidents happened which were bizarrely handled by Davy which pretty much laid waste to the morale of the group.
Domhnall OâDonovan fresh from his A/I heroics was now no longer seen as a viable starter by Davy as he had to go to Germany for two weeks with his work in January, Davy saw this as a lack of commitment from a lad who had been travelling down 3 times a week from Dublin/Kildare for the previous 4 years, the players were mystified.
Paul Kinnerk had just completed his masters degree and went off to Asia in March for a month, at this point Davy decided he knew better than Kinnerk and trained the team in the manner he deemed more applicable and followed none of Kinnerkâs training plans. Kinnerk was pretty much sidelined compared to the input he had the previous 2 years upon his return, he left the set up at the end of the year in frustration.
Cathal OâConnell was then caught drink driving in or around Paddyâs day and was rightly removed from the panel yet that wasnât the end of it, Davy saw this as a personal betrayal as he found out about the incident from a Guard and did not talk to a number of panelists for the bones of 2 months after this except to berate their every mistake in training. Then in early April there was a warm weather camp in Portugal, morale was already low at this point and Davy overruled Joe OâConnor and made him take a back seat while the players were flogged for a week with little or no down time or team building to make up for the weeks behind in prep which Davy had in his head. Pretty much to a man they came back emptied and pissed off and Clare never recovered that year from those 6 weeks or so - all driven by Davyâs poor decision making.
Clare were flat as pancakes when they played Cork as defending champions and never raised a gallop. They were 10 points down after 20 minutes against Wexford but did put in a stirring effort with 14 men to force a draw and 13 men the following week before losing in extra time. Yet rather than admit the mistakes were made and be accountable and delegate back to Kinnerk and OâConnor we got fed a load of shit in Clare about dark forces transpiring against him and how he shouldn;t be questioned and people don;t understand and shouldnât question his style of hurling, he attacked a local journalist and his father had him removed from Cusack Park as he had the temerity to say that Clare were flat against Cork.
I can write and site similar fuck ups by him in 2015 and 2016 as well but I have a meeting in 20 minutes and it will take longer than that to document them.