WE MIGHT HAVE HAD TO THE DECKS

CLARE’S most glorious era, by a distance, unfolded on the back of their last-gasp win over Cork in 1995.

Another sickening defeat that day may have been too difficult for some of their stalwarts to stomach.

“Who knows, like?” wonders Frank Lohan. “I was only starting my road in inter-county but you just don’t know.

“I always think back to 2001 as well. We were in good shape that year and we lost to Tipperary by a point and we were gone by the end of May.

“No one ever heard of us, no one even mentioned us as contenders that year or anything like that but Tipp went on to win the All-ireland and them’s the breaks, I suppose.

“In the same game we would have queried a good few things that happened but that’s just the nature of it, you have to get on.

“We got the break in ‘95 in the opposite direction and that’s what it’s all about I suppose.”

2001 was the last Championship season where every team wasn’t guaranteed at least two games, but there might be a reversion to that type of system this year if the competition is to go ahead.

Lohan, whose brother Brian (inset) now manages the Clare senior team, would certainly take it at this stage.

“Ah I think everyone would, wouldn’t they? At this stage, you’d love to see something happening.

“It’s just trying to get something that’s going to be safe and look, I think the players, they’d be the main ones that you’d just love to see getting a crack at it.

“Whether it has to be behind closed doors, no one really wants that either but I’d probably rather behind closed doors than not at all but I suppose it’s all about risk now.

It’s going to be a common sense approach I think.”