For a 21 year-old still fresh off his first Allianz hurling league victory – and, Clare's first since 1978 – Shane O'Donnell's spirit should be soaring, although he admits himself that isn't necessarily so.
Not scoring in last Sunday's hurricane of a replay in Thurles isn't entirely to blame, and in fairness Waterford never once made that task easy on him: instead O'Donnell's feels his own confidence is suffering from a sort of minor crisis that's more readily explained by an ankle injury.
“I went over on it, pretty badly, earlier in the league,” he says. “I played through the league on it and it was recurring, wouldn’t clear. So yeah, I think confidence is a lot of it.
“It’s not even that I need to play a game that I’m great in. I just need to get a couple of weeks so I can tell myself, ‘oh I’ve had a couple of weeks training.’ It’s more to get confidence in my ankle than anything, instead of going out and thinking about it, thinking ‘it could be sore or if I do this I could damage it’.”
Isolated
Nor does his blame the lack of confidence on being isolated in the full-forward line: the 3-3 O’Donnell scored in the 2013 All-Ireland replay may be a distant memory but that doesn’t mean he can’t relive it.
“No, there was always another man beside me [on Sunday]. And even if there wasn’t, I wouldn’t have an issue with that sort of thing. I actually enjoy that, most of the time. I just wasn’t on form.
“My touch wasn’t good enough. My control wasn’t good enough. My decision-making was poor, more than anything else. So I don’t think it was down to tactics. It was more personal problems I had the last day. But it wasn’t extremely tight or anything.
“Yeah, the extra men make it hard but if your control is good enough, you will make the space yourself.”
Whatever about the slight shortage in his own confidence, O'Donnell has no shortage in the confidence of Clare. Despite the desperate chase to the line, at no stage did he feel they'd finish on the losing end.
“Maybe, towards the end of the game, we felt it was going away from us. But at the same time, we’ve been fairly good this year for just finishing games well. Not that I thought we were going to win it in normal time. But I never thought we were going to lose it, no.
“We went out and enjoyed Sunday night, but as I’m sure you’ve heard, we have club championship this weekend . . . We will focus on club championship on Sunday and look forward to the championship after that.”
O’Donnell was speaking in Croke Park at the launch of the Replay project, aimed at storing European traditional sports techniques for present and future players. Now, with just under four weeks to prepare until part three of the Clare-Waterford trilogy, it’s about bringing his confidence back to the level of his Clare team-mates.
“Yeah, it is tough coming back from injury and straight into a game. But personally, it was nice to get that game in. Otherwise, it would have been 20 minutes of the drawn game straight into the championship. I’d love another four or five weeks, but at the same time it’s nice when there’s a match only just around the corner, knowing that the championship is three weeks away.”
