Tag Archives: All-Ireland football championship

No Clareman has more Croke Park experience than Enda Coughlan — as a player and a selector the Kilmurry Ibrickane legend goes all the way back to when he was just 18 and starting out on his inter-county career, writes Joe Ó Muircheartaigh, looking ahead to this Saturday’s All-Ireland quarter-final. “IT’S still only a field at the end of the day,” muses Enda Coughlan when talking about Croke Park, but he quickly qualifies his statement by explaining what makes the place different and how it plays differently. “You get used to playing on different pitches,” he explains, “and when you’re not used to it, it’s different for a while. I’ve been lucky enough to play there and it’s the feel of it — it seems to play bigger than probably everywhere else. “There’s a tricky wind coming in there and it’s getting used to it. When you don’t get to play there that often it takes time to settle so …

When Tomás Ó Sé bowed out of inter-county football after 16 seasons in 2013 he wrote a retirement article in the Irish Examiner that finished with the immortal line of, ‘I went as hard as I could for as long as I could’. You couldn’t want any more from a player. Over. And. Out. Goodbye to the Hill. It’s a line and attitude to this sporting life that many aspire to, but most mere mortals lack the iron will to carry it through, live by it, do it every time, and eventually die by it, with their boots on in a final valedictory stand. This Clare football team does it, because of what they have, what they give and then the way they go and give some more. Always. It’s what has been bred into them by Colm Collins since 2014; it’s their DNA; it’s their default setting and what they’re microchipped for and it’s all they know. All of …