They skip into the Clare dressing-room, whistling after their work, shirts off and giggling child-like with all white toothy smiles. So that’s what Davy Fitzgerald means when saying his “young” team.
Some of them look impossibly young, and yet they march on, to an All-Ireland semi-final, and God knows where else after that.
Yet what they revealed in Semple Stadium, more than anything, was maturity beyond their years, especially when Galway hit them with two second-half goals.
“We’ve talked about those situations,” said Fitzgerald. “It’s important to respond. Even the day of the Cork game, you take the amount of chances we missed. We kept fighting, we were fighting. People didn’t see it but we were actually fighting. We went over the game a night or two after and we knew we fought it out. We just didn’t get the breaks. We got the breaks here.
“It just shows you – the championship is probably wide open. I don’t think there’s a lot between any of the teams there. But we’re still there and we’re going to give it everything we’ve got.
Very proud
"And I have to thank the supporters, for the way they got behind us. As I keep saying, give the team a chance. We're hurling in the third week of August. A lot of people wouldn't have thought that and I'm very proud of the boys that we're there."
Galway manager Anthony Cunningham eventually emerged from the Galway dressing-room and couldn’t hide his disappointment.
“Sure gutted, to be honest, and very disappointed,” he said, yet suggesting he intended to see out his third year as Galway manager, in 2014.
“We’ve trained even as hard as we did last year. The effort we’ve had from the 31 or 32 guys on the panel has been tremendous. Clare were just that bit sharper than us, so it’s back to the drawing board for us.
“We struggled, form-wise, for the last two matches. For most of the match against Dublin and the first half today. We were heartened by the second-half goals, came back very close and missed a couple of chances to go very close to a draw or win it.
“It’s not the end of the world for us but it’s the end of the championship and we’ll have to build on it for next year. The players are there. I have the utmost faith in the hurling in Galway, even though it’s difficult times.”
