‘Worth waiting for and it won’t be as long again’

This was the Éire Óg senior football championship medal presentation parsed down to just ten words on Saturday night as a bumper crowd of over 250 people attended the club’s celebration of the 2021 Jack Daly Cup success, their first in the blue riband of Clare football since 2006.

The Galway Tenors whipped the crowd with a rousing rendition of Queen’s ‘We Are The Champions’, just as the guest of honour on the night Marty Morrissey did.

And there was more, as the master of ceremonies in former inter-county referee Rory Hickey, who swapped his whistle for a microphone, was at his exuberant best as the Townies toasted their championship success long into the night and early morning on the Gort Road.

“This is what we play for, get involved in management and support the club for,” the Townies’ manager Paul Madden told The Clare Champion.

“We love the club and want to be successful. We managed that in 2021 after many years of effort and of course when you do it once you want to come back and try and do it again,” he added.

The Townies’ journey back to the summit in Clare was a long and sometimes tortuous one over the past few years as they strived valiantly to cash in at senior level, on the back of a string of minor and under 21 successes over the past decade.

“The players had realized that at some point they needed to step up and do something,” said Madden.

“We had been labelled as the perennial talented bunch that when it came to it never won anything. At some point, you need to step up. It seemed to click. It’s down to the players. They just decided that this was the year,” he added.

Madden, who was in his fifth year at the helm and won a senior title as a player in 2006, was asked on stage by Marty Morrissey what made the difference in 2021:

“Did you think at the beginning of the year that you were going to win the senior football championship?”

“I’ve spent about five years thinking about winning the senior championship,” he responded. “We always had a chance. We had stumbled at the quarter-final stage and hadn’t got beyond it. It was a huge frustration for all of us that we hadn’t and I knew if we got over the quarter-final that psychologically we had a chance,” he added.

“I think the big one was Doonbeg out in Kilmihil in our last group game,” said Clare star Ciarán Russell. “People didn’t think we could go out to West Clare and win, but we did with a lot of young lads on the team. That was the big turning point.”

A key ingredient in the 2021 success was the addition of former Limerick senior footballer Seanie Buckley to the management team as trainer/coach, with the six-time Limerick SFC winner and Munster Club winner with Dromcollogher-Broadford in 2008 working wonders.

The transformation of the team was such that after crashing out of the 2020 championship, when conceding two goals in the early stages of their quarter-final clash against Kilmurry Ibrickane in Cooraclare, the team went through the entire 2021 campaign without conceding a goal.

“It was a phone call from Paul Madden that got me involved,” revealed Buckley. “You question yourself, are you up to this? Are you willing to do it?

“I took it on and found that there was a deadly bond within the group. There is a group of 30 there and as the year went on the bond grew tighter and tighter. I couldn’t have asked for more to be welcomed in, but also to get the reaction and work with the group of selectors was great,” he added.

Two-time championship winners with the Townies in 2000 and 2006, Peter Cosgrove and Shane Daniels were also added to the backroom team for the 2021 season, with both lauding the players’ commitment, while at the same time challenging them to kick on in 2022 and try and put senior football championship titles back-to-back for the first time in the club’s history.

“They are a seriously impressive and talented group,” said Cosgrove, “and there is huge potential for the future, but it won’t happen because of what they’ve achieved in the past. They’ve got to drive on from here.”

“Back-to-back is the thing to do,” said selector Tom Russell. “Kilmurry Ibrickane have won back-to-back, so have Miltown and Doonbeg. That’s what the good teams do. That’s what we have to do. We can’t wait another 15 years,” he added.

This elusive double and successful title defence was achieved by the club’s hurlers way back in 1956/57 — now the gauntlet has been thrown down to the footballers to go one better than the 2000 and 2006 vintage did.

After those Jack Daly Cup successes, the Townies returned the to county final stages in 2001 and 2007, only to suffer defeats at the hands of Doonbeg and Lissycasey respectively.
“It’s a great feeling to climb those steps and lift the Jack Daly,” said captain Gavin Cooney.

“Watching Clare team-mates do it and knowing the potential on this Éire Óg team, I knew that we could do it. When it came to me that I was captain, it was something that I wanted to drive and give 100 per cent to. Now we want to do it again.”