Sublime Tubridy delivers for Clare

WITH the future of this team and their management dangling by an increasingly thinning thread, only a man with a special talent and icy temperament could have rescued them.

Step forward David Tubridy. Without him, Clare would have let a 10-point lead slip and would have never recovered. Defeat would have ended the careers of some of their veteran players and zapped the energy and enthusiasm of the rest. Add defeat to Limerick to the stinging disappointment of their loss to Wicklow in Aughrim in their decisive NFL Division 4 league game and the repercussions would have been seismic. Management would have been slated for not taking corrective surgery on a full-back line that couldn’t cope with Ian Ryan.

Clare should have moved to remedy their porous full-back line long before they did, six minutes from time. Barry Hartnett should have been brought on earlier with perhaps Martin McMahon or even John Hayes moved to the full-back line. Perhaps Enda Coughlan could have been brought back into the defensive zone. All of this would have been a ceaseless point of critical discussion this week had David Tubridy not landed two sublime, match-winning scores, in the last three minutes.

Five minutes from time, Ian Ryan kicked Limerick 0-15 to 1-11 up from a 21-yard free. Ninety seconds later, Tubridy received a popped pass from Shane Brennan, who picked up a break from a skied Barry Hartnett cross. The Doonbeg man angled over a classy equaliser and followed it three minutes later with a left-footed match-winner from an acute angle. Has a Clare footballer ever kicked a better point in similar circumstances?

“The boys moved me out the field to get me on to more ball and it kind of worked. The ball wasn’t getting in to the full-forward line towards the end of the game. They moved me out and we got the two scores,” Tubridy explained after the game, adding that this was, thus far, a defining 70 minutes in a Clare shirt.

“Without a doubt. This is only my second win in championship football. To get into a Munster final, what more can you ask for? When they went a point up, a lot of teams would have just dropped their heads. But the boys fought to the last minute of the game. It was unbelievable. We battled right to the end,” he said.

“The Limerick boys were closing down quick, so I had to get it away quick. My man got a hand to it alright but it just crept over the bar thank God,” is how he described his match-winning score.
Fifteen minutes from time, Tubridy kicked Clare 1-11 to 0-9 up, from a seemingly impossible angle to the right of Brian Scanlon’s goal on the Ennis road side of the Gaelic Grounds.

He was honest enough to admit he had been aiming for Gary Brennan on the edge of the square. “If it had fallen to Gary, it probably would have been a score. I saw Gary’s hand up and I said he might take the glory. I was crossing it to him but the wind caught it and brought it over the bar. I’ll take it. I did it about two weeks ago in training as well and the boys started laughing at me. I was crossing the ball and it went over the bar,” he laughed before Clare mentor Liam McHale jokingly butted in and described that Tubridy point as “bad shot selection”.
As jubilant as Clare were in victory, it shouldn’t disguise their second-half collapse. It was something

Clare warned themselves about at half-time when they recalled losing an All-Ireland qualifier (2-18 to 1-18 AET) away to Offaly in 2010, having had a substantial lead.

“We were talking about Offaly inside in the dressing room at half-time. It just couldn’t come back to that. We gave away a big lead that time. Limerick were just revved up for the second half and came back at us. But we got the win and we’re delighted about it. We’ve four weeks to get ready for whoever we’re playing. There will be two teams in it, it will be 50/50 and hopefully, we can give it a good rattle,” Tubridy suggested.

Back home in Doonbeg, David Tubridy has plenty of former Doonbeg and Clare footballers to talk to about their Munster final experiences. Francis McInerney, Pádraig Conway, Gerry Killeen and Kieran O’Mahony were integral components of the 1992 Munster Championship-winning team.

“I met Francis there a few seconds ago and he was delighted. I suppose I’ll have to get a few words off the boys to see what a Munster final is like and how to prepare for it. It’s great to get there and great for the county and for football in the county,” the leader of the current Doonbeg generation reflected.

Tubridy is convinced Clare’s meticulous approach to training and match-day preparation has paid handsome dividend.

“I think when Micheál Cahill [physical trainer] came in at the start of the year, he brought a positive vibe to Clare football. In training, you finish out to the end. When you start a sprint on the line, you’re behind the line. You never take an inch ahead of it. I think that was proven there today,” Clare’s attacking magician concluded.