Glory days for brilliant Clanmaurice

After a glorious triumph, Clanmaurice even with a managerial change on the horizon have a bright future still ahead of them

ON the weekend that Jim Gavin’s resignation as Dublin senior football manager captured all the GAA headlines, Clanmaurice camogie manager Mike Enright also went out on a high, ending his five-year reign at the helm of the North Kerry club with the Phil McBride cup in his hand.

And not unlike his Dublin counterpart, who is well known for his respect and appreciation for legendary figures of the GAA that have gone before him, the man they know as “Tricky” around North Kerry was quick to put into historical context the scale of the achievement of his players on the soft ground in Nenagh.

The fact that he was able to do so while highlighting his native Ballyduff’s place in the history books was probably just a happy coincidence, rather than a sign of Enright’s ability to spot a chance to hype up his homeland and pounce on that opportunity.

“What a year for them, with the county and the club!” he said.

“This is the first All-Ireland hurling or camogie title won by a Kerry club since 1891, when Ballyduff won it. And today, a Ballyduff woman has captained a Kerry camogie team to an All-Ireland title again, after waiting 128 years! It’s a great achievement, I’m absolutely delighted.

“They’re a fabulous team, it was a joy to coach them,” he added.

“I’m bowing out at this now, I’m five years with them and it’s time for a new voice and I’d like to wish the Clanmaurice officers and players all the best for 2020”.

2020 will undoubtedly be a transformative year for the club, and by extension, the county. After years of toiling away at junior level in the championship, Kerry have made the breakthrough and will socialise in higher company next summer, taking on much more advanced sides in the Intermediate grade.

Due to a peculiar anomaly on the club scene, Clanmaurice have to repeat their success if they are to advance, as only teams that have won two All-Ireland titles in succession earn promotion.

That has led to an odd decade, when first Myshall (Carlow), then Johnstownbridge (Kildare) and then Kilmessan (Meath) won the last seven All-Irelands between them.

They all moved up eventually, though some would argue, long past the time when they were ready to do so. Raharney suffered under the yoke of those clubs in the eastern province, losing out by a single point to the eventual All-Ireland winners each of the last two seasons, but given their youthful age profile, they look like the obvious – some might say only – external threat to Clanmaurice repeating this success in 12 months’ time.

With Four Roads about to undergo a serious transition period in Roscommon, Crosserlough still well off the pace in Ulster and very few realistic challengers left in either Munster or Leinster, only a notable regrading downwards of a significant county (possibly the intermediate winners from somewhere like Wexford or Dublin) would represent a significant test for either of these two teams.

Internally, the hurdles Clanmaurice have to clear are arguably more daunting entirely. There are plenty of good hurling and camogie people in the general area who could be a good fit to try and carry on the work done by Enright, but even the right person in a good club can still be the wrong fit.

If Kerry have to step up their intensity and effort to compete at intermediate level in the championship, will here be as much left in the tank when winter rolls around? Moreover, how will the group respond to the chalenge of defending a title, as opposed o the fervent pursuit of a crown that hey felt was badly needed for the club? How important is defending old ground rather than foraging through new pastures?

These are long term questions, not to be answered this week in the majority of cases. In addition, the spectre of taking part in the Limerick senior championship may raise its head again, in order to provide more meaningful games for the club.

In a world where everything hinges on one or two games, it’s difficult o see how the club can continue o come into those fixtures undercooked, so westward glances will become more frequent.

Between that, and of course the oss of their manager and guiding hand, there are some interesting imes ahead for the club. But regardess, they will enter those choppy waters as All-Ireland champions, having slain the Leinster hoodoo hat haunted them in recent years. The ship has been reinforced by championship silver, and will be a stronger vessel when we see it next.

When Clanmaurice manager Mike Enright and his Raharney counterpart Padraic Connaughton reflected on the drawn encounter in the immediate aftermath of their 2-7 to 1-10 contest last Sunday week, it was the Westmeath man who had the more upbeat view.

While Enright expressed his concern about the amount of time his players were on the road, Connaughton referred to how his team learned more about their opponents, learned more about what match ups suited them, and felt better prepared for the replay.

As it turned out, it was the wily old fox who was the one who learned the most. They negated the influence of Fiona Leavy at the heart of the Raharney defence, and made two crucial switches up front, introducing Clodagh Walsh and Saidhbhe Horgan.

Horgan chipped in with 1-1, her goal set up by a shot from Walsh that crashed back into play off the crossbar, but it was their ability to defend from the front that got them into the starting fifteen, according to their manager.

“We had our minds made up all week, we let them in too easy last day for two goals, we were not going to give a goal away today,” Enright told The Kerryman after the game.

“We actually played our centre-back sweeping, Patrice [Diggin] was dropping in to centre-back. We put Jackie [Horgan] up on their centre-back and today she was blocked seven or eight times coming out. She wasn’t the last day, she played lovely diagonal ball and we had to stop that.

“The full forward line was picked for a reason as well, it was to stop their full back line clearing the ball, and by God, the hooks and the blocks that our three full forwards got in today, they would not let them out.

“We defended with our full forward line today and put real pressure on them.”

Light recovery and focusing on their key strengths was the vital ingredient to this victory in Enright’s opinion, not to mention a little insight from a former Tipperary hurler and Sunday Game analyst.

“It was something we worked on all week, we got inside the girls’ heads that the performance in the second half the last day wasn’t good enough,” he said.

“I felt we burned ourselves out a little bit in the first half the last day and didn’t put it on the board. I did feel after that game that we were the better hurling team, we were stronger and more physical.

“We just had a good recovery session, Erin Sheehan – our physio – did a brilliant job on Monday night and we kept our training sessions this week to short sessions of light ball work. We never brought the girls home from college in Cork or anything, we just told them to rest, we knew we had the energy levels up for today and we knew we had their mental strength worked on during the week.

“We brought down Brendan Cummins for a chat on Friday night, he talked for about fifteen minutes and got inside their head how you win these games, and it worked today for us.”

The lessons of their painful defeat to Kilmessan two years ago were also very much to the fore. That Sunday in Silvermines the Kerry women scored just five points and lost out by 0-9 to 0-5, and Enright said that he took a lot from that game in terms of where they needed to improve.

“We spent the last three months working on scoring. Now we only scored six points today, but we have been scoring 2-10, 1-12 in all our games up along. I remember when we lost out in the final in 2017, I said that if we ever get back to an All-Ireland again, we have to score more and be harder to break down.

“We’ve done that in this year’s campaign, we’ve put more scores on the board, three goals again today, and we knew that if we played in the high ball in that second half with the low sun it was going to cause problems, and it did.”

It’s been a hell of a journey.