LET’S TAKE A moment to note that three quarters of the provincial football champions got through their All-Ireland quarter-finals.
Relevant? Kinda.
Because there were reflections in that last year in the hurling championship. Clare were exhausted and in tatters by the time they faced Kilkenny in the semi-final. The Cats had four weeks to put their feet up and let the bruises clear from a Leinster final win over Galway.
Clare had only a fortnight from a victory over Wexford that felt like rubbing against sandpaper for a week.
The end result? Brian Cody’s last win with a Kilkenny team. Twelve points. Handsome.
And so we come to this weekend and the storylines are similar. Matching last year’s story arc, Clare lost another epic Munster final to Limerick. The plot development comes with experience, knowing what to look out for, and subsequently making mince of Dublin.
Emotional scarring? That’s sooooo 2022.
This week, Jackie Tyrrell made the point that there are Leinster final wins, and there are Leinster final wins that feel like two championships wrapped in one. It’s hard – near impossible – to think of the last time Kilkenny players and management went bananas over a Leinster title. A last-play goal from Cillian Buckley will do that even to the best of us.
It all gives Derek Lyng serious capital. Meet the new boss, same as the old one.
Are they under-rated again? They might have the trophy but for long stretches of that second half they were frantically baling water as Galway took over.
For all their rest, they have a queue at the treatment table.
Adrian Mullen – fantastic in this fixture last year – broke a thumb against Wexford and hasn’t played since. Mikey Carey is out long-term and Martin Keoghan is a couple of sprints away from testing his hamstring.
Onto Clare. No end of concerns, but Brian Lohan has named almost all of them including Conor Cleary (shoulder injury against Cork) and John Conlon who had to be taken off against Dublin with a heavy knock. David McInerney comes back in to Conlon’s left on that half-back line but there is no space on the pitch or the bench for Aidan McCarthy.
Lohan has experience on this front. Last year Conlon was a late withdrawal. It might happen again and there exists a chance he was named to deny Kilkenny a pre-match psychological boost. But Tony Kelly wasn’t right with his ankle either and Mikey Butler deleted him from the game.
Onto the Clare match-ups.
The inability to handle Aaron Gillane in the Munster final will haunt them. TJ Reid will provide a similar threat albeit by different means. Who do Clare have to counter him?
Step forward David McInerney, though he wasn’t there for the tests against Limerick or Dublin. Has he got the skills under the dropping ball? Another previous engagement with Gillane would state that he doesn’t.
Or Conor Cleary. But then again, he might not be 100%. John Conlon? What if TJ takes him out of that central area. No. Not worth it.
It’s a mess. It’s a lottery. It’s entirely unpredictable. Good luck to all. A Clare win.