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CLARE football needs one of the county teams to step forward and win even one championship game out of the blue. These days, nearly every Clare team enters the championship arena without any weight of expectation, unless perhaps they are playing Waterford.
That’s exactly the position the Clare minor footballers find themselves in as they prepare to play Cork in Pairc Uí Rínn next Wednesday evening at 7.30pm. Cork will be overwhelming favourites to qualify for the Munster semi-final on May 18.
Cork are the holders and have won 29 Munster championships in total. They are still well behind Kerry, however, who have won 41. The last of Clare’s three Munster minor titles was won in 1953. Prior to that, Clare won two successive minor championships in 1929 and 1930. Clare’s last appearance in a Munster minor final was in 1994, when they were beaten by Kerry.
At the time of going to press, Clare had yet to appoint a captain or name their team. They are due to select their starting 15 this weekend. However, they will have a number of players available who featured in the county’s three Munster championship games last year.
Cork beat Clare 1-9 to 0-9 in Cusack Park, before Clare beat Waterford 4-10 to 1-6 in the losers’ group. They then exited the Munster championship to Tipperary in Thurles, losing 1-8 to 1-3.
Among last year’s panel, who are still eligible, are Niall Hickey, Adrian Murrihy and Darren Sexton (Kilmurry Ibrickane), Oísín Vaughan (Ennistymon), Jarlath Colleran (Doora-Barefield), Stan Lineen (Kilmihil) and Craig O’Brien (Wolfe Tones).
The Clare manager is Michael Neylon (Wolfe Tones), while Noel Normoyle, Maurice Reidy and Leo O’Donoghue complete the management team.
A small number of players, including Tony Kelly (Clondegad), are concentrating on hurling this year and are not available. Aside from that, Neylon has everyone available. However, he does have to contend with the fact that a number of the panel will be playing U-21 club championship hurling this weekend.
“Hopefully, they’ll come clear of the U-21 hurling. There’s five or six involved in that,” the manager commented.
Clare played Kerry, Galway and Carlow in preparatory challenges and also took part in a provincial tournament last November.
“We played in the Munster U-17 competition. We had a bit of gym work then over the winter. We were full-time football training over the last five or six weeks,” the Corofin native explained.
Neylon is confident that Clare are well prepared and that they will give it everything in Cork next Wednesday evening.
With the senior footballers marooned in Division 4 and the U-21 footballers already out of the Munster championship, a shock win next week would be a huge boost to Clare football. If that doesn’t happen, Clare will be back in action on Saturday, April 16. The losers of Clare v Cork will play the Kerry v Waterford losers in a losers’ group game.
