Home is where the heart is for Clare in derby duels

Clare have enjoyed some memorable and famous Munster SHC victories over Limerick in Cusack Park, recalls Joe Ó Muircheartaigh.

THE 1972 Munster semi-final was only four minutes old, but the 13,000 packed into Cusack Park already sensed that Limerick had enough.

Noel Casey whipped a breaking ball to the net at the old scoreboard end, before Jimmy McNamara rattled another past Jim Hogan and the end was already in sight.

“Maybe it’s 1953 all over again,” mused Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh on match commentary — it wasn’t that bad for Limerick, who had been on the receiving end of a 10-8 to 1-1 defeat 19 years previously, but it was still bad, very bad.

“It was a day to remember in the chequered annals of Clare hurling,” wrote Sean King in The Clare Champion after Clare’s 3-11 to 2-10 win.

“Clare, the unheralded underdogs, pitted against all-conquering Limerick, whose supporters were conjuring up all sorts of images of All-Ireland success.

“It was a David versus Goliath clash and this time Biblical history did repeat itself when Clare strode away. Clare’s hurling stature grew a thousand-fold as a result of this unexpected triumph over the Shannonsiders, who came to Ennis amid a fanfare and trumpet-blowing propaganda, but so much did Clare hurl the socks off this highly vaunted Limerick combination that it will be many a long day before the green and white jersey brigade relish a trip across Sarsfield Bridge again,” he added.

The remarkable thing is, that Sean King’s words could be more or less copied and pasted to explain away any Munster Championship fixture between Clare and Limerick in Cusack Park since 1953 — there’s been five and each time Clare’s ability to step up and blow Limerick away has been the common theme.

And, the 1953 victory apart, they’ve always been underdogs.

June 14, 1953 was the day Jimmy Smyth became immortal — in his fourth year playing senior championship hurling for Clare, the multiple Harty and Croke Cup winner with St Flannan’s moved onto the stratosphere by hitting 6-4 in Clare’s 34-point win.

The Clare Champion rejoiced that Ruan’s finest was “rampant like the rest of the team” and was able to “bedevil the Limerick backs, with wizardly accuracy”.

“Things fell right for me that afternoon,” Smyth modestly recalled 50 years later in 2003.

“We had a nice team coming that time and proved it afterwards when winning the Oireachtas. And we always expected to beat Limerick,” he added.

Smyth’s words echo down the generations, because a trait in all Clare’s victories over Limerick there has been that expectation and confidence that they always had their measure — in Cusack Park, or anywhere.

The 1972 win was a case in point, with Clare tearing into the Shannonsiders with those early goals from Casey and McNamara, before moving out of sight to lead by 3-10 to 0-7 with seven minutes remaining.

“The start we had that day was everything,” recalled left-half-back Jackie O’Gorman from a day that changed his life.

“Everyone was talking about Limerick and there was nothing about us, but we rattled them.

“I don’t remember much from the game,” he continued, “but afterwards I was in the West County Hotel talking with Limerick’s Richie and Phil Bennis, got chatting to their sister Joan and ended up marrying her. That’s my biggest memory of the match,” he added.

For goalkeeper Seamus Durack it was a first taste of playing Limerick in championship, while 14 years later Limerick’s return to Cusack Park marked his senior championship debut as manager.

“You wouldn’t have given us much of a chance of contesting a Munster final in 1986,” recalled John Callinan. “We had been hammered in both league and championship in 1985, but with the change in manager Seamus Durack came in and turned things around.”

The big turning-point came against Limerick — once more the Shannonsiders came in confidence and after beating Clare by 11 points in the previous year’s National League final, another rout looked on the cards.

“Limerick started really well,” recalled Callinan. “The late Danny Fitzgerald was on fire and they went 0-8 to 0-1 up in the first quarter, but goals by Syl Dolan and Gerry McInerney got us back in the game and we dominated the second half to win by six.”

Tulla’s Jim McInerney was a second year inter-county hurler that season; Cyril Lyons had a couple of years on him, while Lyons’ Ruan clubmate John Moroney made his first championship start on a team that looked to the likes of Callinan, Sean Stack and Ger Loughnane for experience.

Seven years later it was the turn of McInerney, Lyons, Moroney and Ger O’Loughlin to provide experience as Limerick came to Ennis once more.

“Jim McInerney set the tone the previous Tuesday night,” recalled Anthony Daly from a day that gave him a first championship win as captain.

“We were going to beat them back over the (Sarsfield) bridge in Limerick. We did play physically. I remember dunting Mike Reale after the parade. He was centre-forward and Ruski (John Russell) was marking him.

“I said to myself, ‘something has to be done’. He got thick about it and Ruski just stood over him as if to say, ‘What the **** are you going to do about it’.”

In truth, Limerick didn’t do much about it, as a Clare team backed by the majority of the 19,000 attendance raced into a 2-5 to 0-2 after 20 minutes — Lyons got the first goal in the 17th minute; Ger O’Loughlin grabbed a second two minutes later when he directed a Jim McIerney delivery to the net, while Lyons’ second gave Clare a 3-10 to 1-3 interval lead.

“That was the first day we got a taste of it,” said Daly, reflecting back on what eventually was a 3-16 to 3-12 win. “We really had the crowd with us and we had something,” he added.

A quarter of a century later, Gerry O’Connor, had that same feeling as Clare thundered to victory over the shellshocked Shannonsiders to seal a Munster final spot in 2018.

“I never ever heard anything like the volume of the noise that was coming off the stand and the terraces right throughout the game,” Clare’s joint-manager said when reflecting on a stunning 0-26 to 0-15 win. “It inspired our players, no question about it whatsoever.”

No one was more inspired than Peter Duggan, who hit 0-13 and cut a defiant figure afterwards: “We’re playing at home,” he declared.

“This is our home ground; we don’t just let any team in to rob us; it’s our home and we don’t want to ever have a loss here,” he added.

Clare could do worse than pin those words to the dressing room wall on Sunday as Peter Duggan et al go into battle and try to preserve their unique record that stretches back nearly 80 years.