Paul Flanagan has a photograph of the Clare crowd after the 2013 under-21 final, lounging in their thousands on the field in Thurles.
The game had been a washout, a 22-point undressing of Antrim, but the image captured a mood: not ecstasy so much as bliss. A week earlier Clare had drawn the senior final in Croke Park, and for the first time in ages Clare had some tenancy in the spotlight.
They had a story, too. Chapter one.
“It’s so striking, the picture,” says Flanagan now.
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“We really felt we were on the cusp of a great time. There was real buy-in from people around the county. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it since. You had the seniors, and you had the 21s, and our style of play, the exciting nature of the play, the intensity of the play. It was a phenomenal time.”
Flanagan captained the under-21 team that year, the middle leg of three All-Irelands in a row. Naturally there was churn in those groups from one year to the next, but some of the core players were generational talents, careering ahead of schedule. Eight of the under-21s were part of the senior panel that year.
That status came with conditions. On the night they won the Munster under-21 final, the senior panellists on the team were whisked by minibus from Thurles to Dundrum House Hotel for “a full recovery session,” says Flanagan.
“I remember we had the cup on the minibus, but when the recovery session was done we were pretty much home to bed.”
Five of them started the All-Ireland replay against Cork. Clare won. A 19-year-old Shane O’Donnell scored 3-3. None of those numbers should hang together.
Four of them finished the season as All-Stars: Colm Galvin, David McInerney, Tony Kelly and Podge Collins. In the history of the awards, four under-21s from the same county had never appeared on an All-Star team in the same year; but back then, that was the beat of their lives, hurdling new frontiers in their stride.
“It was a freak,” says Colin Ryan, one of the established players on the Clare team in 2013 and for years afterwards.
“To have Colm and Tony and David Mc and Podge and Shane O’Donnell to come so quickly, and to have such a major impact on how you played – the free-flowing nature of their hurling, their carefree attitude. It rubbed off on us all. To have one-third of the team that started the All-Ireland final to be under-21 was kind of crazy, but it was kind of infectious.”
Ten years ago, what did they think the future would hold? None of the guessing seemed risky. Between the drawn senior final and the replay, the Clare selector Louis Mulqueen said that if Clare won they “could be talking about a golden age”.
It wasn’t a delirious thing to say and it wasn’t a minority opinion. On the All-Ireland-winning team was a pillar group of hardened, experienced campaigners, but all of the optimism for the future hinged on the fledgling wizards.
“You could see straight away they were so comfortable [at senior level],” says Donal Tuohy, the former Clare goalkeeper. “That’s the one thing that stood out to me.”
By the time Clare were eliminated from the following year’s championship in the qualifiers, 10 of the under-21s from 2013 had made their senior championship debuts; by the time Clare stopped drilling in that mine years later, a dozen of that group had been capped in the senior championship. The throughput was extraordinary.
As a chemical equation for success, though, was it missing some elements? Were the expectations unrealistic? It is easy to say so now. At the time, it was easier to believe that the plan was bombproof.
“The thing you look at it is the balance overall,” says Flanagan. “You have a select group of players who were at their peak for senior level, and you had a select group that were absolutely primed for under-21 level. That crossover didn’t marry in the way you might expect.
“There was a process of expectations because of what we’d won, and we knew that was going to be the case. You were expecting under-21 winners to win senior championships and for one reason or another it didn’t unfold like that. It just didn’t happen.”
Clare didn’t return to Croke Park for five years and in that time they didn’t have an All-Star. Tony Kelly, one of the greatest players of the modern age, didn’t win his second All-Star until seven years after his first.
In the collective struggle, individuals suffered. It was like they were bobbing up and down in a dinghy, with no motor or no paddles, exposed to the next wave.
Along the way, they all had different stories: injuries, distractions, other priorities, dips in motivation and form. Collins spent some time just playing for the footballers; then he tried to be a dual player; eventually he stepped away.
Peter Duggan lived abroad for a couple of years. Seadna Morey stepped out to set up his own business and skipped two seasons; he’s back now. A chronic groin condition ended Colm Galvin’s career. Flanagan tried and failed for years to nail down a starting place and thought he was finished. He travelled for a little while and came back. So did McInerney.
But they all knew that there was unfinished business.
“There were some fallow times when we were in our mid-20s,” says Flanagan. “We weren’t performing to our peak, for one reason or another. I think there’s an unsaid thing there between all of us, that we really want to push as much as we can.”
In that silent covenant, “now” is one of the key words unsaid.
So, here they are. Clare electrified last year’s championship with a team drawn from different generations, but still led by the under-21s of 2013. Flanagan and Malone had their best ever seasons in a Clare jersey; Kelly probably had his second best season; O’Donnell and McInerney were rejuvenated. In spells, Duggan rewound the clock to 2018, his best year.
“I have to commend the likes of Cathal Malone and Paul Flanagan and Peter Duggan who didn’t have success as quickly as other lads,” says Colin Ryan.
“They stuck it out. Like, Cathal Malone has developed into being one of Clare’s most consistent hurlers. It didn’t come very quickly for him. He had to put in lots of shifts of being a sub and being taken off.
“The same with Peter Duggan. His development came a lot later too. Paul Flanagan was a freak in the sense that it was a long time after the under-21s when he nailed down a spot.
“I nearly commend lads like that a lot more in what they’ve done for Clare because they could easily have walked away, and suddenly you’re left with a big void. That’s why Clare under Brian Lohan have been able to compete. He has players who know what hardship means.”
In the dynamics of the group there are other moving parts. Many of them have been friends for years. Hurling had taken care of the introductions but their relationships strayed beyond the causes that united them.
Many of them landed in UL at the same time, and others followed. Some of them lived together. Flanagan shared a house in Castletroy with five other hurlers, all of whom had played for the Clare Under-21s.
“A lot of us have spent a huge amount of time together,” says Flanagan.
“It’s funny, even WhatsApp groups that you’d have now, or friends groups that you’d have now, are intertwined with hurling and under-21 squads and college. We’ve experienced an awful lot together so you’ve a lot of reference points.
“There’s a deeper friendship there. A lot of us hang out together. You could talk about anything except hurling as well. There’s a genuine friendship.”
For many of them there was a previous relationship with Brian Lohan too. McInerney and Jack Browne both captained UL teams in Fitzgibbon Cup finals under Lohan’s leadership. Kelly dragged them to a title one year.
“We were in awe of him anyway,” says Flanagan, “but in UL he was a breath of fresh air. You could see that he really valued honesty.”
Browne and Stephen O’Halloran, two veterans of the 2013 U-21s, were released from the senior panel at the end of last season. Which leaves seven. Barring injuries, or an unexpected loss of form, at least six of them will start in the championship. O’Donnell will be 29 this year, but all of the others will hit 30, or have already done so. Time is slipping. Faster now.
O’Donnell will be 29 this year, but all of the others will hit 30, or have already done so. They can feel the time slipping.
“We’re all cognisant of it,” says Flanagan. “You’re cognisant of it without focusing too much on it. There’s loads going on in people’s lives, and there’s loads of exciting things coming up in people’s lives. A lot of us from that age group are on the same wavelength. We want to make the most of our time. Hurling is so fleeting. You only get a certain window to show how good you are.
“And there’s a recognition that this won’t go on forever. There might be a year in it, there might be two years in it. Whatever’s in it, we’re going to give it our best crack.”
That promise is Clare’s best chance.
