Banner all set to raise standards
GERRY O’Connor is talking of an alternative history to the hurling Championship of 2018. It was the summer that, after years of underachievement, a talented Banner side finally returned to the top table, but their whole season hinged on a wild 20 seconds in June. More specifically, it turned on the width of an upright in Semple Stadium.
Had Jake Morris’s rasping shot billowed the net, rather than hit the post, there’s a chance Tipperary’s summer would have taken flight and Clare might have yet another year full of regrets.
O’Connor reckons had Morris’ shot gone in, it would have signalled the end of his and Donal Maloney’s reign as the Clare comanagers. Instead, in the next play, Podge Collins worked the ball into Ian Galvin and the Banner found the net, spelling the end of Michael Ryan’s time in charge of the Premier County. Using that goal as a springboard, Clare came within a whisker of the All-Ireland final, losing the semi-final replay to Galway by a point.
‘That game against Tipperary defined our season,’ the joint-manager accepts. ‘What goes through your head there is “we were gone”. I remember one of the headlines in the paper the following day was “Gone in 19 seconds”. At one stage, you can see clearly that goals were opening up for the Tipperary attack and you are thinking “this is gone”. Then, 20 seconds later, we are back. I have never seen such a momentum shifter in a game before.’
It opened up Clare’s entire summer but O’Connor says that if they had lost that game, both himself and Maloney would have had no option but to step away.
‘I can only tell you what I feel. I think we would have looked at it in terms of that we had given it our best shot and it didn’t work out. As it is, inter-county management isn’t a project that lasts much longer than two or three years, not if you are working with the workload involved now.’
Nonetheless, O’Connor says it wasn’t a difficult decision for the management team to remain in charge. Clare’s journey through the Championship, and the sensational form shown by John Conlon, energised the pair, and the Banner supporters, again. There’s a sense that after a few years of underachievement, this talented side are supping at the top table once more.
‘Ultimately it is an honour for us to be involved with this group of players. We were lucky that this year we felt that we achieved and set credibility in terms of connection with out supporters.’
However, O’Connor insists that the feeling within the squad and management team is that Clare underachieved in 2018, falling at the Munster final hurdle again and failing to take advantage of a weary-looking Galway in the All-Ireland semi-final.
‘On the outside, the Clare public would feel there was a lot achieved. We would beg to differ on that slightly,’ O’Connor points out. ‘There was an All-Ireland semi-final there for the taking and we didn’t take the opportunity.
‘We are back in the bear-pit of the Munster Championship now and just because we got out of Munster last year and into the final, there are no guarantees. It is so competitive in Munster now that nobody could predict the three teams that will come out next summer and the two that won’t.
‘If you ask anyone, they will come up with three different teams every time,’ O’Connor said at the launch of the Munster senior league, which Clare get underway tonight against Cork in a repeat of last year’s provincial decider.
‘The only worrying aspect is that everything fell very neatly for us last year. We had two games over a two-week period, then a break, then two games again. The reality is now we have three games on the bounce over two weeks.
‘That is something we hadn’t planned for or experienced. The dates are set in stone so we are going to have to go and manage that but it will test our powers of recovery and recuperation.’
O’Connor, though, is a fan of the new system. ‘The big advantage is that it is very structured. Everything you are doing now is clearly outlined between now and June 22.’
Clare start this season without the services of their livewire corner-forward, Shane O’Donnell, who is currently on a Fulbright Scholarship at Harvard.
‘He is due back at the end of March,’ O’Connor explained. ‘Shane didn’t do a whole lot in preparation for the Super 11s and he was well able to compete. He is one of those guys that comes back very quickly to form and fitness.’