GROUNDHOG Day.
This is the biggest clash of Clare football cultures in
nearly 60 years. That’s a bold enough statement, but it’s true.
You have to go back as far as 1955 for the county final
between Doonbeg and Ennis Faughs for a day that’s as potentially significant as
this one.
Those were the days – there was a draw an replay – where two
different eras collided head on in a clash that with time assumed far greater
importance than a county final itself.
It was a territorial war as much as a football one, with
Doonbeg emerging out of the west as totems of their parish and a community that
you could say took all the territory of the old Kilrush Union.
The side to take on the giants of the day from the capital –
the team that everyone west of Edenvale called the League of Nations.
The Magpies were representing west Clare, because football
was a west Clare game – it was up to them to enforce this notion and prevent
the Faughs from winning a fifth county title in nine years.
West versus East.
It was a tipping point in the history of the club game in
Clare – Doonbeg snuck a draw the first day thanks to a late Francis Killeen
point and then charged to a 0-8 to 1-2 win in the replay on the back of a
five-point haul from Jimmy Carney.
The Doonbeg Dynasty was born and the Faughs died.
Doonbeg v Cratloe is the most significant West versus East
clash since.
End of story.
Doonbeg are the giants – they may have only one county title
to their name since 2001, but they’ve won 17 more since that breakthrough year
in ’55; they’ve been the most successful county championship team in Clare
since ’55; the first team from Clare to win a Muntser club; the team to provide
four starters to the Munster final winning team of ’92, the captain of that
team and much more.
Cratloe have been nothing. Hurlers who took up football – as
in that’s the gospel west of Edenvale. Thing is, nothing could be further from
the truth and going to school on some recent football history tells us this.
The Under 14 and Under 16 A titles; the minor and Under 21 titles; the couple of
intermediate titles, but quite apart from that, the team they have on Sunday
has as much county football experience as any that has contested a final this
past generation.
Thirteen of the starters have been on Clare panels, whether
it’s minor, Under 21, junior or senior – the exceptions being Conor McGrath and
David Ryan – while there’s county experience among the subs too.
So, let the ráiméis about Cratloe’s interest in football end
there – put it in the same bosca bruscair as the notion that a Cratloe win will
offer nothing to Clare senior football. Over a third of their team have played
senior in the last couple of years – the two Collins’, Conor Ryan, Liam
Markham, Martin ‘Ogie’ Murphy and Barry Duggan – while they’ve given the game
in Clare new manager Colm Collins.
And make no mistake, they’ll want the Jack Daly as much as
they did the Canon Hamilton in 2009, or 2010 and 2012 when they also reached
the final frontier.
It sets up a real bonfire of vanities clash – the old
traditional power that are the Flying Magpies against the coming power striving
to make the big breakthrough.
County final day couldn’t ask for better and that’s why it’s
55 all over again, albeit the roles are reversed somewhat.
You know what you’ll get from Doonbeg.
Those Magpies – even the two who have flown all the way into
the nest from Newmarket-on-Fergus – bleed black and white. They’ll die for it,
because that’s what Doonbeg do and because that’s the spirit of old that
carried them to many a county title and one that seems to be inculcated into
them once more by Kieran O’Neill.
They have that seam of experience from stalwarts and legends
at the back like Padraig Gallagher and Conor Whelan through to the younger
brigade like Colm Dillon, Brian Dillon, Shane Ryan, Frank O’Dea, Shane O’Brien
and more who have their county medals.
Then there’s David Tubridy. He who oozes class off left or
right. His performance in the semi-final is already the stuff of legend and one
that will be magnified even more if Jack Daly breaks through the border with
Cooraclare out Mountrivers way and pitches up in the Long Village for the year.
In Tubridy’s Bar of course, given Tubridy’s captaincy of the
team, given that it’s one of the spiritual homes of the game in Doonbeg and
wider west Clare.
They believe, nay are fully convinced, that the Jack Daly is
coming home.
But Cratloe believe in themselves just as much, as they take
the final step in a journey they’re four years into at this stage.
In 2010 they were the team to expose a tiredness in Kilmurry
Ibrickane at the quarter-final stage when pushing them to a point – it was
Doonbeg who took advantage when taking the ‘Bricks in the semi-final that year
on their way to claiming the title.
In 2011 Cratloe should have put Kilmurry away in the final
moments of their semi-final in Lissycasey, but didn’t have the killer instinct
that Johnnie Daly proved himself to have down the other end in the dying
seconds.
In 2012 they had nothing left to give against Kilmurry in
the quarter-final, having been taken to extra-time on four days previously by
Liscannor.
They’re a different animal this year though. They’ve a new
midfield in Fergal Lynch and Cillian Duggan under the same isolated player rule
that allows Shane O’Brien and Ronan Goode play for Doonbeg.
And they’ve a forward line – the six that started against
Éire Óg in the semi-final all have All-Ireland medals. Add in midfielder Lynch
and there’s seven senior medalists in the side – no team ever contesting a
county final in Clare (it could even be the country) could boast such an
arsenal as this.
And that’s why this is a huge, huge chance for Cratloe to
make history. They have the forwards – they’ve scored eight goals in their last
three championship games – and they have the confidence.
What the don’t have is county football final experience;
what they don’t have is the experience of facing off against heavyweights like
Doonbeg who have super-heavyweight experience when it comes to winning county
titles.
Then again, back in ’55 emerging Doonbeg landed their own
knockout blow against the super-heavies from the Town. That’s what Cratloe will
be doing if they win here.
Cratloe can create history, but it’s hard to back against
and buck tradition. That’s what Doonbeg have, and David Tubridy, but Cratloe
might just get there.
Who knows it could take a last minute goal like Padraigh
Chaplin got in the hurling final in 2009, or maybe even old warhorse Padraig
Gallagher playing a county final 20 years after his first to stop it on the
line.
Who knows. It’s East versus West. Anything can happen.
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