THERE WAS A Croke Park element to the ending, a line drawn under this Clare story soon after the All-Ireland quarter-final last summer.
Derry’s dominance was pronounced that afternoon, Sean Collins watched on after a season wrecked by injury and soon figured that inter-county retirement was beckoning him at the age of 33.
And yet GAA HQ was also the setting for the more uplifting days, the ones that sparked the memories that still burn brightest.
Start with September 2009.
Collins packed six U21 campaigns into his Clare career. Springtime was spent playing football, campaigns that were unprofitable. Summertime was for hurling with the glamour of Munster and All-Ireland finals, 2009 the season that exploded to life.
“Clare hadn’t won anything in a while so there was a great buzz around the county that year. It was before the GAA got a lot stricter with training regimes and we really enjoyed it. We’d a good management, they let us out after games and there was a good bond there. We just had a great time.”
Move on to September 2013.
For Collins the senior hurling call-up came from Sparrow O’Loughlin in the winter after that U21 breakthrough. He dazzled individually, his pace causing Waterford bother on his championship debut in 2010 as he notched 0-2 and he matched that scoring tally on a heady evening in Ennis in June 2012 when a 14-man Clare team took down Dublin in a qualifier.
There were miserable experiences like the 13-point beating by Dublin in 2010 and the 17-point loss to Galway in Salthill in 2011.
The tone soon shifted, at the close of the 2013 hurling year he was on the steps of the Hogan Stand with his younger brother Podge, their hands clutching the Liam MacCarthy Cup.
“There was fierce talent coming through with Tony Kelly, Colm Galvin, David McInerney and all that. Davy in fairness did a good job bringing them all in. It was an unbelievable year in ’13. It was all so new and fresh in Clare at the time. For the family it was a nice moment with myself and Podge lifting the cup together.”
Forward to April 2016 and the brothers were celebrating again. The sport and the silverware were different, but the location and the feeling were the same.
Clare’s footballers won a Division 3 league final classic, pipping Kildare by 2-17 to 1-19
“Mick Bohan came in that year, you could see after one or two sessions, he was going to improve things. He was a top class coach.
“That Kildare league final and the Roscommon game in Salthill were just great days in 2016. But different league games meant a lot to us. The day we got promoted up in Antrim from Division 4 in 2014. There was a very small crowd, in a ground up in north Antrim, a really special moment. Same with 2017, I was injured the same day, but we beat Cork in Ennis and we’d really struggled against Cork for years. That was a massive thing.”
Throughout last year the realisation was creeping up on him that the time was coming to step off the inter-county treadmill.
“I was coming back from injury after the league and I struggled to get back in. I saw James Horan saying around the time Keith Higgins retired from Mayo, he was saying players kind of know themselves where they are.
“I always felt that. Last year I knew I wasn’t at the pitch of it.”
After over a decade at the peak of the game, he moved on. There was little fanfare, no major announcement, he drifted away in a low-key fashion with a Clare Echo report on the first day of December revealing the county football squad was shorn of himself and Kevin Harnett, another squad stalwart.
He had packed in plenty though to his career.
Collins and his contemporaries were Clare’s hurling trailblazers. His brother Podge was involved for two-thirds of the success between 2012 and 2014, but it was the class of 2009 that landed the county’s maiden Munster and All-Ireland titles at U21 level.
The final win over Kilkenny stands out, the last in the grade to be played in Croke Park and a day that is a relic of a different era when supporters joyously spilled onto the field.
“It was a really special day. There were thousands of Clare fans there, it was the time of pitch invasions as well so getting to meet the brothers on the field always stands out.”
They were a team that contained underage prospects that thrilled in full flight. Their imposing attacker Darach Honan rifled in the wondrous goal that settled Clare’s Munster final win over Waterford in heroic.
In the All-Ireland semi-final that year he shot 2-4 in an epic against a Galway team that had Joe Canning serve up 4-7.
When Sean and his wife Meabh got married in Clonmel before Christmas, both Honan and Canning were his groomsmen.
“Darach was amazing that year, he really announced himself to the hurling public in Ireland. He got man-of-the-match in a lot of games.
“The game with Galway was amazing. You’d see it the odd time when TG4 play it back. The two lads were really dominant the same day, both hard to handle.”
The dual player mandate was one he willingly fulfilled. His underage career was hectic as he moved between codes and served various teams.
“I remember the U21 football with Clare in 2010, I was involved with the senior hurlers and Fitzgibbon Cup with LIT that year. I came in not long before the U211 football started and sure it wasn’t easy. It’s just the problem with dual players. You see minor footballers and hurlers now, they nearly can’t do both because the games are only a few days apart.
“It wasn’t ideal but I still enjoyed doing both.”
The Clare footballers with Caltra All-Ireland winning boss Frank Doherty at the helm were the first senior team to recruit him, he was a Leaving Cert student in St Caimin’s in Shannon then. There was a few years with the Banner hurlers and he juggled both senior sides in 2014.
After that it was a football-only pursuit, a familial link acting like a magnet.
“When Colm was training his own crowd back in Kilmihil, I would have gone back training with him and we would have gone to a lot of football games when we were young. When he got the Clare football job, it was hard not to get involved. We were mad to get involved. It’s hard to believe it’s 10 years, he’s there now.”
From the outside the dynamic of a father as county manager and son as player seems a curious one. The Collins family never let it get entangled in uncertainty.
“With your father in charge it was special. He always treated myself and Podge fairly, the same as every other player. We were never not talking for a long time anyway over selection or anything like that.
“Colm would always tell the whole squad that all the views of the management are taken on board with selection. Everyone was treated well.”
He departs a Clare football scene bristling with positivity. Work has seen him in a new role recently as business development manager with Musgrave Ireland. He’s moving around Clare, conversation in bars and hotels that naturally flow to football. Another year of Division 2 and Munster action awaits, a trip to Croke Park to face Dublin in the league and a hosting in Cusack Park of Cork in the championship.
The Clare squad is in a vibrant and healthy place.
“David Tubridy touched on it recently in an interview he did with a local paper. For young fellas coming into inter-county setups now, it’s a really good time if they’re interested and dedicated. You get the best of S&C, dieticians and coaches. It’s really good for a young player. I could see that last year in Clare, the young fellas are at such a high level of conditioning at such a young age.”
His own fitness challenges told him it was time to opt out.
“I had a groin injury that was at me a lot. I had finished out the club season and was rehabbing it but wasn’t getting any relief. Went up to Santry and they diagnosed it as an issue around my glutes. I just went on a programme to fix it and by time I was back then, the league was finished.
“I went back training and wasn’t at the same fitness level as the lads. You’re playing A v B games, I could be centre-back on the B team marking Eoin Cleary. I just knew myself I was finding it harder to get up to speed. I made the decision then a week after we finished up after the Derry game and I was happy enough with it.”
Not that the GAA chapter is entirely closed. He’ll be there with Clare in a supporter capacity, the recent comeback win over Louth the first he’d witnessed from the stand. He’s looking forward to a season focused on Cratloe’s football and hurling endevaours. They have been a group that have blended together when it came to both sports. Across both there have been four county senior medals collected, another six finals contested and Munster senior deciders sampled.
He’ll play for both sides again, does some training of underage teams in the club and helps out with the ‘Gaelic 4 Mothers & Others’ initiative.
“Meabh always says that Cratloe is nearly worse than Clare! So there’s still plenty going on with the club. You’re still heavily involved in it. Looking forward to giving more of a full year’s commitment to Cratloe.
“It all goes so quickly, it went in a blink of an eye but I really enjoyed it. Made great friends out of it. Big disappointments and a few good times as well.
“But really enjoyed the whole experience. When you’re a young lad, it’s one of the things you want to do and I got to do it.”
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Originally published at 06.15