You wouldn't want to get too caught up in the obituary writing business, but it was impossible to restrain a fleeting intimation of mortality last Sunday at Pairc Ui Chaoimh.

Whether the fullness of time will show this to be an over-reaction remains to be seen, but undoubtedly we were all contemplating the end of an era before Niall Gilligan sent Conor Clancy careering in behind Tipperary's defence.

The inexorable self-belief which prompted Davy Fitzgerald to canter up the pitch and detonate the injury-time penalty which saved Clare's title was characteristic of the team. Yet the performance for the preceding 70 minutes had been as limp a championship showing as anyone could remember from the county since the great breakthrough of four years ago.

It was even more worrying than the big defeats by Tipperary and Limerick in the Munster finals of 1993 and 1994, in that at least those early setbacks identified obvious deficiencies in personnel and the need for replacements.

Sunday was different. The problem appeared to be one of fatigue. Even at the beginning of the season, there was a jaded air to the team, who never managed to wind up the sort of high-tempo, controlled fury which had marked their most memorable days in recent years.

There were, of course, extenuating circumstances. Ollie Baker's indisposition removed the player who perhaps most typified the team's awesome style. Baker and club colleagues Sean McMahon and Jamesie O'Connor were part of St Joseph's Doora-Barefield's march to the All-Ireland title in March, and there had been much speculation about how much that would affect their summer campaigns.

Evidence at the weekend wasn't encouraging. McMahon marked well but didn't dominate in the way which has become associated with his game and which has been such a vital element in the team's pre-eminence. O'Connor was busy, but not near his best.

Yet the club championship doesn't have to drain the participants - even such important contributors as the Doora-Barefield All Star trio. Birr's club success inspired Offaly to championship success last year.

Closer to home, the Lohan brothers survived Shannon Wolfe Tones' progress to the 1997 All-Ireland final and enjoyed memorable seasons as the county won the following summer's Munster and All-Ireland titles.

The reason may lie in the nature of Clare's exploits over the last six years and the huge demands they have placed on the players. Not alone did the team raise the ante in relation to physical fitness, but the intensity of the mental focus was ferocious.

Michael McNamara, the trainer who has implemented the fitness programmes, has always maintained that the rigours of physical preparation do not of themselves create a natural limitation on the career of inter-county players. But he does believe that material factors, such as finance, career and family, eventually intrude on a player's ability to concentrate single-mindedly on the demands of high-maintenance fitness regimes.

To an extent, that is already happening. Anecdotal evidence has always suggested that Clare have found training a wearisome business, but in the past there was always the willingness to submit to it in order to serve collective goals.

What happened at Crusheen was as much about mental subjugation as the actual need to attain astronomical fitness levels. As has been publicly stated, training was about finding out who would go the extra mile, both literally and figuratively. It defined who wouldn't wilt when the sun beat down on dusty championship arenas.

There have been plenty of signs recently that such single-mindedness is waning within the county. Three of the side which took home the first All-Ireland in 1995, Michael O'Halloran, PJ O'Connell and Eamonn Taaffe who scored the decisive goal that year, have demobbed.

Among those who remain, natural processes are taking effect. Famously, none of the 1995 team were married, but that has changed for at least six of them. Even the surviving bachelors are no longer proof against the desire for simple socialising. This doesn't mean getting twisted, merely having more of a life outside the world of inter-county hurling.

THE seriousness and distaste for frivolity which has characterised the team in the last two years became evident at the outset of the 1997 campaign when captain Anthony Daly spoke in an interview about the team's discomfort at being so popular in defeat after the agonising reverse in Limerick in 1996.

Maybe the new mindset would have retained the All-Ireland that year, but it played a role in the county's downfall last year. Caprice was, however, their biggest enemy.

Had Waterford's Paul Flynn landed his 90metre free in the dying moments of the Munster final, Clare would have been spared the corrosive effects of the replay and the loss of Colin Lynch and Brian Lohan through suspension. They could have lost Munster but retained the All-Ireland.

Most neutrals would feel that Clare were overall the best team in last year's championship. Ill-luck dogged them, just as it opened the door for Offaly. Had everything gone only slightly more felicitously, Clare might have won the last four All-Irelands.

The point is, with two All-Irelands under their belt, the county has already staked a substantial claim to the approval of posterity. In the last 20 years, only Kerry in football and Kilkenny in hurling have won more than two All-Irelands with roughly the same team. Even Wexford of the 1950s won only two All-Irelands, although the victorious 1960 team featured nearly half the back-to-back winners from the 1950s.

Regardless of what happens in Saturday's replay, it is very hard to see Clare winning another All-Ireland without major changes of personnel and/or management. The controversies of last year were certainly a distraction, but more corrosive appears to have been the impact of the campaign on the team's indomitable self-belief.

The once monolithic defence no longer seems immune to self-doubt. The attack has struggled to overpower opponents, as in its heyday, and, crucially, the disciplined aggression has flagged.

There are dangers in reading too much into one performance, but taken in sequence from last summer, it has been about 12 months since Clare gave a thoroughly awesome display, when defeating Cork.

Diminishing hunger, physical weariness, mental fatigue and expanding interests are all factors in the decline of champions. In boxing they say beaten champions, even great ones, never come back.

There have been few greater champions in modern Gaelic games than Clare's hurlers, but the strong inkling is that, as currently constituted, they won't win another All-Ireland.

E-mail: smoran@irish-times.ie