TRUE GREIGHTS
‘13 unlucky for some as bosses rebuild Banner with only 8 surviving All-ireland stars
DONAL MOLONEY has said the 2013 Clare team is no more as they bid to build another All-ireland winning side.
Although they won a League title in 2016, Clare have largely struggled to back up that All-ireland success of five years ago and joint manager Moloney (right) says that the baton has been passed to a new batch of players.
On closer inspection, of the Clare team that beat Kilkenny earlier this month to maintain a 100 per cent start to the Allianz League, only seven of them started the 2013 All-ireland final replay win over Cork, with Seadna Morey also introduced as a sub on that momentous day.
There was a particularly pronounced exodus in Clare over the winter with Darach Honan, Brendan Bugler, Conor Ryan, Colin Ryan and 2013 captain Patrick Donnellan all retiring for various reasons.
Moloney said: “The team of 2013 is largely broken up now between retirements or forced retirements or injuries cutting short people’s careers; the backbone of that team is actually gone.
“I think it’s a challenge
Davy [Fitzgerald] was dealing with before us, if you like, the transition from the 2013 team that was backboned by some great leaders like Paddy Donnellan, Brendan
Bugler, Colin Ryan,
Conor Ryan, Darach Honan, all of those guys, any county would find it challenging to rebuild quickly and in terms of losing people of that calibre, irrespective of what your underage talent is like.
“I think we’re essentially trying to work through that transition in terms the team now is vastly different to what existed in 2013. I think that era has definitely ended. The team now is vastly different, there’s different guys have to lead, there’s different guys on the field so it’s a very, very different set up.” Although Clare reached a first Munster final in nine years last summer, the campaign was largely underwhelming and while they had their chances against Cork in the provincial decider and in the subsequent All-ireland quarter-final against Tipperary, Moloney admits that they were effectively also rans in the Allireland race.
“I don’t think our overall performance levels last year indicated that we were All-ireland contenders. That is the reality. “Even against
Limerick in the Munster semifinal, while we were probably the better team, we still struggled for patches of that game so we had inconsistency.”
Tomorrow Cork come to Ennis and though Clare missed a penalty and two other decent goal chances in the Munster final before losing out by five points, Moloney has no qualms with the outcome that day.
With wins over Tipperary and Kilkenny already, completing a set of victories against hurling’s traditional big three in Ennis tomorrow will essentially safe- guard Clare’s place in the top flight with two games to spare.
“Our approach was to try and put our best foot forward and try and get a little bit of early season momentum from a performance point of view,” Moloney added.
“We were up against two stern challenges, having Tipp and Kilkenny in your first two games is always challenging and the focus was just really on trying to get a consistency in performance both in the games and in terms of game to game. The lads largely delivered on that.” VERDICT: Clare