Building teams of the future

All-Ireland Minor Hurling Final
Joint manager Donal Moloney spoke to Sports Editor Seamus Hayes.

WHILE Clare will be doing all in their power to win on Sunday, there are other matters at stake in building strong underage hurlers. According to joint manager Donal Moloney, the key is to feed lads into the U-21 and senior squads to bolster the county at inter-county level.
“Clare hurling should take a lot out of what these lads have done already,” he noted. “The spirit they have shown has been exemplary. I wouldn’t like to burden them with the future of Clare hurling but I will be very disappointed if we are not cheering five or six of these lads on in senior jerseys in four or five years’ time. I think that has to be the ultimate goal.”
Moloney noted that there has been a huge lull in the county for the best part of 10 years.
“The stars of the ’90s kept Clare going up to 2005. From there on, we have been really struggling to produce consistently. We just didn’t have the hurlers coming through at the right level of skill and class to be able to compete. Look at Tipperary and Kilkenny and the conveyor belt that is there. We have nothing like that. We have had a first glimpse of it in the last two years with the U-21s and now this group. That is only two teams where they have them coming every year. We need more of that.
“Over the last number of years there have been a number of scapegoats, two primarily – the county board and the development squads managers. I can tell you that the county board have been superbly supportive of us. The guys in charge of the development squads are brilliant guys who know their stuff. We inherited this team. We didn’t have them at development squad level coming up. When you look at the quality of them, somebody has done something right along the line,” he added.
Moloney stressed the panel are heading to Croke Park with the intention of winning.
“I believe that there are significant odds against us. It has taken a lot of work to get here and we can’t let it slip now. After we lost to Waterford, we had to take stock. We knew we had a huge amount of work done and the key thing was could we turn it around quickly in the few days we had.”
Like others involved with the squad, he believes getting over Tipperary was the major hurdle of the year.
“We knew we had the measure of most of the opposition we have come across, so getting over Tipperary was the critical issue for us. Clare hadn’t beaten Tipperary in minor hurling for many years and that was a huge millstone. The fact that we were significantly better gave the players huge confidence. It also gave us huge confidence that the work was finally paying off. It was a case then of keeping the preparations fairly similar so that we could be in a position to take on the rest of the contenders.
“It is ironic that we are playing Kilkenny because their manager, Ritchie Mulrooney, is a good friend of ours at this stage and he has done more to help us than any other county in the last two years. He has been fantastic in terms of support and the type of challenge games they have presented us with. Kilkenny have always been great if you wanted to measure where guys were at. We called up Ritchie and his team and we found out fairly quickly. It’s a bit ironic that we are facing each other now,” he added.
“I think he is probably right in the view that we have been the two most consistent performers at this level this year. They have had a more comfortable route than we have. We have been in a lot of strange places and have had difficult moments and hard calls. They have had a more comfortable run but whether that serves them better or not we will have to wait and see,” Moloney added.
He underlined the importance of a strong panel. “You might say we haven’t used a lot of players in recent games. We have used 24 in the championship. In a training match, numbers 16 to 30 actually beat the first team. The competitiveness is savage. That sort of competitiveness is driving them on and helping the sharpness of the players.”