When Sunday comes Clare’s prospective All-Ireland opponents will already be known and the dizziness among the Dalcassian Army on the long road to Dublin will be such that many will be racing ahead to the Big Dance.
The Last Dance. The All-Ireland final.
We know that the fourth Sunday in July doesn’t quite have the first Sunday in September ring to it, but it’s pitch-perfect at the same time, and in the minds’ eyes of the supporters it will be opening out before them.
It’s because, what ever way the sliotar falls between Limerick and Galway on Saturday afternoon there’ll be a derby to look forward to for Clare — and a famous first. To a man, woman and child, they’re convinced. My 16-year-old says it’s a mix between manifesting and the placebo effect.
Kilkenny have met Galway and Limerick in All-Ireland finals on more occasions than anyone from Clare cares to remember, so for Clare why not have something completely different? A first final against either of their closest neighbours.
If it’s Limerick that win on Saturday, the talk will be about the tall hurling tales and banter on the borderline either side of the Footbridge between Clonlara and Castleconnell, and in Parteen, O’Briensbridge, Monteplier and Corbally, while if it’s Galway’s day the same sense of community, kinship and rivalry will come to life around Kilbeacanty and Killanena, in Beagh, Shanaglish and Tubber and go all the way into the ‘North Clare’ capital of Gort.
But before these storylines are written, it’s to get there first. And it’s the matter of Kilkenny. The Super Power, and you might even say Sleeping Giant because they haven’t won an All-Ireland in the eight years since 2015.
That’s their Gorta Mór, second only to the ten-year gaps between All-Irelands from 1922 to ‘32 and from 1947 to ‘57.
It’s a monumental challenge for Clare, because all semi-finals are, but also because all the talk of Clare being the only team that can deny Limerick a four-in-a-row brings with it great expectations, but also great pressure.
And, it pushes Kilkenny into the long grass — the very place you don’t want the 36 times All-Ireland champions to be, and shouldn’t be. They’ll just love that — and they’ll quietly glory in the fact that all the talk is about Clare before they take to the field to reaffirm their semi-final superiority over the Banner.
And, it’s not just ‘franking’ last year’s form as the old hacks would say — more than that it’s maintaining their near-perfect record against Clare at All-Ireland level.
Eight times they’ve played against each other in the last 91 years — the All-Ireland finals of 1932 and 2002; the semi-finals of 1997, ‘99, 2006 and last year; the quarter-final in 2004.
Clare’s only victory along the way was in the 1997 All-Ireland semi-final — a day when they just weren’t going to be beaten because apart from 70 minutes of hurling they were playing for their legacy and place in hurling history that year.
Legacy and sense of place on the pantheon of heroes translated into the mantra of good teams win All-Irelands, but great teams win a second — that’s what was at stake in ‘97 and Kilkenny never stood a chance.
And so it was.
And so it is here for Clare, who are 4/5 favourites to win, even though it’s Kilkenny that have the championship titles under their belts — the team that beat Clare last year may have only had three All-Ireland medal winners in its ranks in Eoin Murphy, TJ Reid and Pádraig Walsh, but they’re coming into this game on the back of a three-in-a-row in Leinster and All-Ireland appearances in ‘19 and ‘22, whereas Clare’s cupboard is bare.
That’s what makes this such a huge task for Clare.
The challenge for all concerned is to come up with something different — then the All-Ireland final place can open out before them and it will be like 1997 all over again and the local derby final will be real and here, not just on the horizon.
One interpretation of Clare’s play to date has been that theirs has been a man-marking game, in tracking opposing attackers’ every move. Could this be the day to rip that up and tweak it?
If they do the same on Sunday will it be a case that Kilkenny will drag them all over the place to create the space for Eoin Cody + one in the full-forward line to do real damage, just like Aaron Gillane and Limerick did in the Munster final with so much space between the half and full-forward lines?
Could this be the day for a zonal defence?
It’s nearly 20 years ago now, but when Anthony Daly played Alan Markham as a sweeper against Kilkenny in the 2004 All-Ireland quarter-final it was the master stroke.
The back-to-back All-Ireland champions were caught completely off guard and it so nearly carried Clare over the line to a famous victory, only for Cody’s Cats to do what they always did — they licked their wounds, learned from the experience and had a game plan to win the replay.
In Kilkenny’s glory years, the perception coming from inside the camp was they’d just go out and hurl their positions and trust that in the Mano a Mano battles they’d have enough to get over the line.
It was never that easy, it was rubbish, in fact. Kilkenny were always blessed with tactical nous and ahead of the curve. Take last year alone when Mikey Butler, a 2022 debutant was detailed to track Tony Kelly; go back to 2012 when Walter Walsh was parachuted into the final replay against Galway, with the bolter ending up as man-of-the-match.
The big man could have a big part to play on Sunday — Kilkenny will have looked at the route one ball Dublin won against Clare in the first half of the quarter-final and might feel that it’s his time once more and that they need more aerial power than they already have.
Clare, meanwhile, will be hoping to have their own towering presences of John Conlon and Conor Cleary in defence, while the time is now for Peter Duggan to step up to something like his 2018 All-Star form and lend more weight to current All-Stars Tony Kelly and Shane O’Donnell, not forgetting All-Star-elect Mark Rodgers.
It’s there for Clare, but it’s to grab it and really live up to the belief coursing through the rank and file of the Dalcassian Army that they have what it takes to avenge last year’s semi-final defeat.
Only then can the banter on the Limerick or Galway borderline begin.
And what banter it would be!
You can reach out, touch it, feel it, smell it. But it’s to grab it like they were born for the fourth Sunday of July.
Down to the hurling, as Ger Loughnane would say.