‘Micko effect’ fails to fire up players

COMMENT

WHEN Mick O’Dwyer was formally ratified at a specially convened Clare County Board meeting in November, the clear hope was that the legendary Waterville man would inspire Clare to finally escape from Division 4.

They had come very close in 2012, losing by three points to Wicklow in Aughrim and had missed out in 2010 following defeats to Limerick and Waterford.

The committee who recommended the appointment of Mick O’Dwyer, former county board chairman Michael O’Neill, Pat Hanrahan, Gabriel Keating, John McCarthy, John Reidy, Tommy Curtin and Brian Considine, did so in the belief that his presence would ignite Clare football and at least lead the county out of Division 4.

With the league now concluded and Clare still in Division 4, it’s clear that the county senior footballers have not progressed from where they were 12 months ago. Based on the contrast between their league results last season and this, they have in fact regressed.

Losing at home to Waterford by a point and to Tipperary and Limerick by six, indicates that Clare are just not good enough. Yet while Clare didn’t play Tipperary in 2011, they defeated Limerick in league and championship, by a point on each occasion.

It must be said that they were lucky to hold on in the counties Munster semi-final meeting in the Gaelic Grounds but the fact remains that they did. This year Clare lost to Limerick in the McGrath Cup, after extra time and more comprehensively last Sunday.

A year after comfortably beating Waterford in their 2012 league game in Cusack Park, Clare lost to the same opposition in Miltown Malbay. So clearly the vaunted ‘Micko Effect’ has failed to ignite thus far in Clare.

O’Dwyer doesn’t have to prove himself to anyone but his arrival in Clare did not inspire any discernible upsurge in player interest. While a number of Kilmurry Ibrickane players, who didn’t feature with Clare in 2012, came on board, about a dozen of last year’s panel have not been involved in 2013. 

Amongst the players on the Clare panel last year and not this year, for various reasons are David Russell (Kilkee), who hasn’t retired from inter-county football, Shane Brennan (Clondegad), Graham Kelly (Miltown), Barry Duggan (Cratloe), Kevin and Barry Hartnett (Meelick), Timmy Ryan (Kilmihil) Diarmuid Daly (Corofin), Stephen Tierney (St Breckan’s, injured), Niall Browne (Two Mile House, Kildare), Dara Blake (Liscannor), Eoin Troy and Michael Foran (both O’Curry’s).

John Hayes only returned to the panel in March, while Michael O’Shea came back following a shoulder operation.

To further underline the turnover of players, five of those who started against Limerick last Sunday were not part of the Clare panel last year. While no inter-county panel is going to remain static in successive seasons, the turnover in Clare is particularly high, making it difficult to establish depth in the panel beyond the first 15.

On O’Dwyer’s arrival in Wicklow in the middle of the last decade, player interest zoomed upwards. Not so in Clare, where the trend of players coming and going continued.

In the coming weeks Clare will project forward to their home Munster semi-final meeting with Cork or Limerick on June 16. While O’Dwyer has always been a championship man, the priority for Clare in 2013 was to finally achieve promotion. Failure to manage that leaves Clare approaching championship buoyed by hope, rather than concrete ambition.