A defining week for Lynch

Fergal Lynch is preparing for a seismic week. First off, the Quin National School teacher is hoping to start against Kilkenny in Thurles on Sunday. Thoughts of possibly going head-to-head with Tommy Walsh would cram a hurler’s thoughts most weeks. This is not any week though.
The following Friday, he will be standing at the top of St John’s Church in Cratloe awaiting the arrival of his fiancée, Angela O’Gorman. Kilkenny in a league semi-final followed five days later by tying the knot, not exactly a typical week. Before he can completely concentrate on April 27 however, he’s preoccupied with Kilkenny and says that if he ends up with a black eye or a nick on the forehead, he has a plan.
“I’ll get over that. The make-up artist will probably be calling to Angela so if that happens, we’ll get them to call to Dangan for 15 minutes,” he laughs.
Organising a wedding appears to involve minute organisation. Lynch maintains that it definitely does; it’s just that with the hurling panel’s hectic training schedule, he’s had to play a supporting role on the wedding planning front.
“You’re training four or five nights a week and coming home then trying to sort out stuff for the wedding. In fairness, Angela has an awful lot of work done. I’d be lost only for the amount of work she’s done,” the Clooney-Quin clubman confides. 
If Clare stun Kilkenny and qualify for the league final, Lynch will miss his second decider within a month. Suspended for the Division 1B final against Limerick, he will be honeymooning with his wife when the final is played on May 6.
“I’d be delighted to be sitting somewhere in Chicago or New York watching it. I’ve sat out one league final already, so I know how it feels,” he reflects.
Red-carded against Offaly in Tullamore, Lynch had to make do with supporting Clare from the sideline in the Gaelic Grounds on April 7.
“It was very, very hard to swallow. You’re training all your life to try to play senior hurling with Clare and when we got to one of the bigger stages, it was very hard to sit on the sideline when you’d a fair idea that you would have been playing,” Lynch says. He acknowledged the suspension was his own fault but missing out has heightened his desire to play on Sunday.
“I’ve to learn from these things. It has happened a few times in my hurling career and it’s something I need to work on and make sure it doesn’t happen again. It really steeled my own mind that I’d be more determined that I would try and get in for the Kilkenny game. The lads did play very well against Limerick. We’d a couple of matches in training and then training itself, it made me train a bit harder and focus a bit more on my own game to try and make sure I can get my starting place for Kilkenny on Sunday,” Lynch states.
The Clare vice-captain acknowledges that winning back his place could be tricky.
“It’s the strongest panel we’ve had in a very, very long time in Clare. There are definitely lads that can come in straight away and take your position. If they do that, you’ve to work twice as hard to get it back off them. Just a glimmer of a chance is what someone needs and you could be sitting on the line for the year but that just shows the strength in depth our panel has at the moment. It’s a healthy thing to have,” he feels.
Although they beat Limerick in the Division 1 B final, Clare didn’t open until well into the second half. A group with a weaker mindset could have capitulated.
“The thing that’s being drilled into us all year is to believe and fight to the end. As a group, we never gave up even when we went eight points down at two stages in the game. We didn’t get a goal but we kept ticking away at the scoreboard and we believed in the end we were going to get the result we wanted. Limerick were a very well-drilled team and they were very well prepared compared to the first day. Maybe we caught them on the hop the first time. We said we wouldn’t panic and we’d stick to the way we wanted to play and thankfully it did work out,” Lynch notes.
“It’s very easy to forget about your system and your game plan when things start going wrong but in fairness to Davy, Louis, Mike and Paul, they have done a lot of work with us in making sure we keep our concentration and keep working at the things we’re able to do and do the simple things very well,” he reveals.
Lynch says Clare will mostly concentrate on trying to extract the maximum from themselves against Kilkenny, while not ignoring the fact that they are playing the ultimate hurling outfit.
“We’ll stick to our own system and our own routine. We have go out and play. Fair enough, we do mention a couple of players and how they play but realistically we have to concentrate on our own style and try to attack them in that area. Things are going to go wrong against Kilkenny at times and things are going to go right. It’s how we deal with all of that as a group that is going to reflect the result we’re going to get,” he predicts.
Lynch joined the Clare senior panel in 2002 so he has experienced a few regimes. Bar one year, during one of two years he was based in England, he has been an ever-present panellist since. A quick look around the Gaelic Grounds pitch last Saturday week clearly indicated Clare has a huge backroom team. The players’ sole task is to hurl. Everything else is looked after, down to providing them with their gear and towels on training nights.
“It’s seriously professional the way things are run. He’s a real players’ man Davy and he really does look after us but in turn he’s really looking for performances and results out of us as players. If we don’t do that, we’re not earning the right to get all these things we’re getting. It’s one of the best set-ups I’ve ever been involved in,” Lynch maintains, although he insists Ger O’Loughlin’s contribution should not be overlooked.
“In fairness to Sparrow, last year he really laid a foundation for us. He brought in a lot of the younger players and gave them their first taste. Credit has to be given to him. A lot of people blamed him for what happened but he did an awful lot of good work for Clare too,” Lynch concludes, before returning to his lunchtime yard duties at Quin National School as a defining week nears for the combative attacker.