“In Clare, hurling is like a religion. And Brian Lohan is our God” – Tony Kelly.
CLARE FORWARD SHANE O’DONNELL exited the field just prior to the first half of extra time being blown up, Shane Meehan running in for him. And with that, it felt like some magic was crossing over the sideline.
By then he had two points from play for himself, but as a focal point of the Clare attack, he was a bull that was on the hunt for any old artefacts of china. For periods he carried the Clare attack, his pick-ups had Germanic efficiency, his upper body strength utterly stupendous, and his whiff of threat a stench that reached the nostrils of even those in the nosebleeds of the Cusack Stand.
When he came off, he had taken blows to his shoulder, his ankle and was riddled with cramp.
And when the final whistle went at the end of 100 minutes of hurling, he sprinted 50 yards onto the field in utter delirium, a young calf let out onto a fresh field at the first hint of sunshine.
This was a man who had come close to turning his back on hurling after multiple concussions that endangered his ability to function as an employee. Who felt short-changed by the very association when he brought his concerns.
And here he was living out his boyhood dream all over again.
“It’s very hard to describe – just an outpouring of emotion that’s 10 years in the making,” he said afterwards.
“Tony’s (Kelly) right, you think it will come around when you win in your first year, and that obviously did not transpire. To get a day like today just makes 10 years of hardship worthwhile.”
Along the line, Conor Cleary and Brian Lohan embraced. Manly, manly stuff now, you understand. Nothing too touchy feely.
Cleary was another who had left the fray before the end. As had Peter Duggan, Diarmuid Ryan and Cathal Malone. Executive players, spent in the cause, in a game so frantic and demanding. Someone might want to look at that, how the outcome can come down to whoever is less exhausted.
This wasn’t the case here. Clare’s victory was romantic and wonderful, but the evidence of Conor Leen’s late tug on Robbie O’Flynn’s jersey showed that an equalising free should have been the correct outcome.
But look, it’s not an exact science. That’s the beauty of the thing. A game when Clare can earn no frees in the entire second half – not a single free – and still you can pull at a rag nail with referee Johnny Murphy.
Cleary had special reason to be thankful to Lohan. In the 24th minute, he earned a yellow card for impeding Brian Hayes. Four minutes later, corner-back Adam Hogan also entered the book for hanging out of Hayes while the ball was miles away.
Some managers in that situation recognise the enormity of such a booking. They get spooked. They turn to selectors and engage in a panicked conflab with wary looks over their shoulder to who else is available.
Instead, Lohan refused to blink.
After the break, Clare were eager to get back on. While their defence was getting set as Cork remained in their dressing room, an umpire used the opportunity to speak to Cleary and Hogan. Sensing the mood, Lohan marched out towards the official to make sure everything was in order.
But let’s go back for a moment to the pre-match stuff.
In the absence of a satisfactory curtain-raiser game to get the juices flowing, someone in Croke Park has decided that endless noise and shouting fills that gap. We’ll stick a pin in that one and return to it soon.
In the battle of the pre-match scene-setting, Donal Óg was the Content King last week, no doubt. His interview with Patrick Horgan that deviated into a deep dive about the shape and care he takes of his hurleys has to go down as one of the greatest hurling conversations ever. The delight both took was palpable.
He wasn’t finished then. After taking a warm round of applause after being unveiled on the jubilee team, he recounted his schoolyard days in Midleton CBS, when he and fellow scholars would enact the same event; ‘some of us carrying pot bellies’, he added.
You’d suspect that the S&C crews weren’t happy with the pageantry on display either. Michael D Higgins was moving gingerly on two canes and he seemed remarkably unhurried as he went down the Clare line in his jovial way.
Standing stock still, the Cork players fidgeted and did little dances and movements to keep nerves and muscles relaxed. If we might be as bold to offer a suggestion of perhaps some Popemobile contraption that might whizz him down the red carpet of the football final, players leaving their outstretched palms open to give the Prez some skin.
Or fist-bumps. It is the 21st century after all.
The game itself was beyond compare. The best hurling game ever, apart from the one a fortnight ago, perhaps. Cork opening with three points, Clare coming right back with their own trio.
Cork then with 1-4 in five minutes. Rob Downey travelling at leisure with the Clare defence emptied out on the left wing before smashing goal beyond Eibhear Quilligan. You’d have worried for Clare then.
That dread lasted all of five minutes before Shane O’Donnell decided to go big game hunting. He barrelled through a thicket of Corkonians before dishing off a delightful offload to Aidan McCarthy to slot home. Three more points were added as a flourish.
With both sides looking to make a name for themselves in the Championship Quarter, it got frantic. Biros were under pressure to record scores.
Five scores came in three minutes. The second last was the second Clare goal when Mark Rodgers feasted on a scrap from a puckout and evaded Sean O’Donoghue and Mark Coleman on the left wing to squeeze his shot off.
Goal number three for Clare has to go down as the most outrageous of outrages. David Fitzgerald caught the puckout under pressure from Mark Coleman and passed off to Kelly. He sprinted towards the honeypot, evading Tim O’Mahony and Rob Downey with a swivel of the hips. He executed an over-the-head dummy that bamboozled O’Donoghue, took another tap touch and poked to the net beyond Patrick Collins with the deftest of finishes to the top corner.
Captain Tony Kelly with some superb individual play to score Clare's third goal
— The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) July 21, 2024
They take a grip on the game
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In a game that was accruing all the ‘everythings’, there was even an alarming moment when referee Johnny Murphy took a stumble in a congested midfield. When he recovered himself, he had somehow taken a knock on his head that, with adrenalin flowing, was squirting a modest amount of blood, before he was attended to by physios from either side. You can never be too careful about a referee’s thin-slicing of moments when the heat is really on.
On and on and on it went. Relentless and remorseless, damaged bodies crying out with cramp and slippage.
Cork had a late penalty shout. There was a goal-scoring chance, no dispute, when Robbie O’Flynn was pulled down by David McInerney. Referee Murphy took soundings from his umpires and elected for the free. Converted by Patrick Horgan, it signalled an avalanche of scores to draw level on 73 minutes.
The Tony Kelly point a minute later could have been one of the greatest moments of the GAA. An epic season needed an epic score to win it and he obliged by picking up a puckout scrap, taking a couple of agricultural hits before spinning and flinging a ball over his shoulder, all the while off-balance.
Cork had one final chance. One last go. And it happened for them. A long Patrick Collins free was fought like mad for. Tommy O’Connell got his pick right into his left hand. Aron Shanagher pulled his jersey enough to count. O’Connell exaggerated the effect, but he was entitled to.
Narrow enough it was too, but Horgan guided it through the posts. Extra time. An epic season needed extra time.
What could be better than hurling? Extra-time hurling. One in which the very depths of panel strength would be tested with so many players now off the field.
Goal chances arrived, David Fitzgerald being set up for a gimme that came off the ankle of Ciaran Joyce with the net gaping. At half time, both teams were level for the third break of the day.
In the second period, another goal chance landed for O’Flynn and while his shot was clean, it was a nice height for Quilligan to bat out.
If we didn’t get the Tony Kelly winner in normal time, his final score was of staggering quality. Aidan McCarthy and Shane Meehan added to stretch the lead to three.
Horgan cut that to the quick, and then the final play belonged to O’Flynn. Wide. While Conor Leen had a handful of his jersey.
As soon as the opening bars of ‘Lisdoonvarna’ landed, the Cork forward line sprawled out on the grass. Clare did it. Liam MacCarthy number five.
As Tony Kelly delivered his stirring words from the Hogan Stand steps, the mind was cast back to a quiet Sunday afternoon in west Belfast, the crowd being reduced because of Covid measures on 9 May 2021.
Clare lost that day to Antrim in the league. Antrim were full value for their win. But at the time Clare were embroiled in the murkiest of Civil Wars. Lohan was a beacon, one of those that had to face up to all the shit flying around.
That day he gave his interviews with the calmest of voices, a mile away from the image he had as a bug-eyed defender in the inside line.
Lohan knew.
The rest of us didn’t.
He’s a stoic old stock, is Lohan. In an age where many other managers have learned the value of patronising fans and talking about connections between team and supporters when they erect barriers with the same, Lohan doesn’t appear to give a fig for that stuff. It makes the Clare people love him even more.
The more he ignores them, the closer they get.
Go back to the league semi-final this year and a game where they bullied Tipperary around the O’Moore Park pitch in Portlaoise. After the game, he was invited to dish out some warm and honeyed praise to some of his young contenders that looked like they were made of the right stuff.
‘Your defence was strong, Brian. Conor Leen gave Jason Forde a hard time of it out there?’
‘Good players,’ he responded.
‘You are building a bit of strength in depth there. Darragh Lohan, Leen, they’re all adding something?’
‘Yeah. Good players,’ he elaborated.
On a day when the game was broadcast by the BBC, giving hurling its greatest reach of eyeballs, the quality of the game was a gift, but an expected one all the same.
No doubt the dumbstruck tweets of Bob from Leamington Spa and Angie from Ilford will be taken note of and offered up as further evidence of why this most generous gift was bestowed on our little curious nation. All we have to do now, of course, is get more of us playing it. Again, one for the spike. It’s a long split season.
At 7.35pm, over four hours from battle commenced, the seagulls had taken Croke Park over once more. Swooping and squawing, seeking out the remains of crisp wrappers with the crowd either floating off or trudging home.
The groundsmen were already prepping for the football final, forking and mowing and inspecting.
Some of the Clare backroom staff were in a small huddle getting their picture taken with Liam MacCarthy.
And there he was. John Conlon. Old Man River.
Still in his number 6 jersey, the arm sleeve discarded, in sock soles. He was recording a video on his phone, aimlessly moving here and there without a defined target.
What was he recording? And then you realised.
He was recording magic.
