This week’s Clare Champion includes a very special, 16-page souvenir supplement to mark Clare’s success in the All-Ireland Hurling Final. In this supplement we talk to Tony Kelly, Brian Lohan, Shane O’Donnell, John Conlon, Conor Cleary, Cathal Malone, Eibhear Quilligan, Brendan Bugler, Pat O’Donnell, Tommy Corbett, Deirdre Murphy, Davy Fitzgerald and many more. We also have all the colour from before, during and after the game, the excitement from the homecoming events on Monday night and a souvenir team poster. This collector’s item is in the shops now.
Below, Owen Ryan looks back at a magical victory for Clare supporters.
THE brief for this article was to write 1,000 words of a supporter’s diary about last Sunday, but of course that’s not where it should start.
A more apt beginning is when the referee’s final whistle sounded on July 6, and a famous Clare victory over Kilkenny, which had looked so unlikely for so much of the game, was confirmed.
Seated with my partner and son in the Hogan stand, pleasure-affirming neurons deep within all three of us were fired up, the sun was shining and all was right with the world. This was living.
But before too long, even before the players had finished lepping around on the pitch in celebration, a new reality was setting in. I was going to need to get tickets. And tickets for a Clare-Limerick or Clare-Cork final were not going to be plentiful.
Sending a young child to the Hill or onto one of the stands alone isn’t really an option, so two of the three tickets I needed would have to be beside each other.
When Cork, a county with almost 600,000 people, a proud tradition and a for-them-unprecedented 19-year drought qualified the following day it was worrying. Very worrying.
And yet somehow there turned out to be no need to worry at all.
Ten days before the final we had what we needed, incredibly and very fortunately, given the desperation that was around.
Very appreciative for what we had, we could already start thinking about the match.
Our son Bobby has somehow developed a huge appreciation and love for intercounty hurling at the tender age of four, and watching him express that has been the personal high point of following Clare’s campaign this summer.
It hasn’t been without its drawbacks. It’s doubtful if anyone else in the county spent an hour crying after the Munster final, before vowing they wouldn’t be going to any future Clare-Limerick games or watching them on TV, but in general it has been wonderful to see the game grip him as it did his father as a boy.
For months now every day our home has seen imaginary matches when he role plays Shane O’Donnell, facing off against Kyle Hayes or TJ Reid and most recently Patrick Horgan. Occasionally he switches to Peter Duggan and sometimes even becomes Brian Lohan and exhorts the Banner to raise their standards, before quickly switching back to O’Donnell once again.
With a sudden passion for the game having burst out, it was wonderful to let him know he’d be going back to Croke Park for the final.
There’s a fantastic novel by Cork writer Tadhg Coakley called The First Sunday in September which touches on the impact All Ireland finals have on all sorts of disparate people, and in the days before Sunday I mused on All Irelands gone by.
I attended hurling All Irelands in 1991, 1995, 1997, 2002, 2010, 2011 and 2013 and a football final in 2008. I remember how and with whom I travelled to each one, as well as quite a bit about the days of each of the games, and I’d imagine most supporters are the same, as the All Ireland is such a defining event each year.
Surely no Clare people who were there will ever forget the moment Eamon Taaffe rattled the Offaly net, for example, or Domhnall Donovan’s famous point, nor would most have forgotten the events of the hours before and after those famous matches, and who they spent them with.
In 2013 I hadn’t yet met my partner Eilish, so this was the first time our family were travelling to an All-Ireland together. It’s a privilege to be able.
The journey to Dublin was as simple as could be. Early start, short stop in Athlone, parked in the city centre; no problems.
Clare people of a certain age will remember a time when the Banner being in Dublin for an All-Ireland was something no one ever expected to see, and it’s still a joy to see the saffron and blue in the streets around Croke Park.
One of the only low points of the day was my son’s upset as I turned for the Davin Stand and his mother and himself went to the upper Cusack, but you can’t have everything.
Once inside I nearly became the first injury casualty of the day. With Cork warming up, a ball came flying over the nets behind the goal. Reading the programme at the time, I was almost struck in the eye, only for the quick reflexes of a genial Tipperary man sitting beside me. He caught the ball a couple of centimetres from my unsuspecting eye ‘I saw it all the way’ he said. I owe him a pint.
In fact I owe him several as he listened to my utterly biassed, often incoherent exhortations to players and officials over the rest of the afternoon. At least there were thousands more around behaving in the same way, they took away a lot of the focus.
Probably everyone has already read all the superlatives they need to about the game, it was fantastic of course. This was as gripping as any match I can remember, where it seemed almost every error could result in the concession of a score that might be decisive given how closely matched the sides were.
Prior to the match Tommy Corbett spoke about 1000 mad things happening in any game before someone wins, but this one must have had 10000. Moments of brilliance, errors, great tackling and catches, frees conceded, it felt dangerous to look away for a second.
Like many others I still remember the deflation on the way back from the 2002 final, and it was fantastic to be overjoyed rather than despondent when the final whistle went.
On the way home roadworks played a big role in us not pulling in until 1am. It was a very small issue coming on the back of a Clare win, but it would have been a long, long road home if Cork had the cup.
If I was following the brief I was given that would be the end of the article, but of course the All-Ireland doesn’t just end on the day.
The Fair Green on Monday night was just fantastic too, really brilliant scenes of joy, excitement and fun. Everyone involved in it should be very proud of themselves.
It should go without saying that everyone involved in the Clare set up should also be very proud and as a supporter I’m very grateful. It has been an incredible year following them. Even before Sunday’s epic there had been great displays, some tough defeats, several dramatic finishes to games, many moments of individual brilliance and huge honesty of effort throughout the team. Thank you.
In my house the match will be watched back dozens of times before the Munster championship starts next year. This superb victory will reverberate inside our minds and hearts for months and years to come. Up the Banner.
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked with a number of other publications in Limerick, Cork and Galway. His first book will be published in December 2024.