In sport, endings often write the rest of the story.
In victory, Clare’s luminous resilience became the explanation for everything, even though the point about resilience is that it is impervious to outcomes. They needed it most when nobody could see it.
The other thing is that you cannot depend on resilience to deliver a happy ending. It is not a transactional relationship. You cannot pray to it for favours. Clare built it, over years, until it became their survival instinct. Without it, this group of players would have been sunk.
Much has been made of Clare’s three Munster final defeats to Limerick and their two All-Ireland semi-final defeats to Kilkenny in recent years. But in the post-match press conference Tony Kelly was quick to reference the Munster final defeats of 2017 and 2018 as well, both against Cork.
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Twelve players who appeared for Clare in Croke Park on Sunday played a part in those Munster finals. Shane O’Donnell failed to score in both and was replaced with 20 minutes to go in 2018. Kelly scored one point that day.
The championship is full of suffering that often leads to nothing except more suffering. That possibility existed for Clare too. Losing five Munster finals and three All-Ireland semi-finals since 2017 was not a tax that would be refunded to them if they finally won the All-Ireland. The tax was punitive and paid.
Winners will often say what they took from losing, but there is an element of make believe in that process. Clare must have managed that. In the first half of the All-Ireland semi-final this year it looked like they had learned nothing from the previous two All-Ireland semi-finals, but they found a way to prevail that involved winning a battle with themselves.
In that game they trailed by six points. Against Cork in April they trailed by seven points, just as they did in Sunday’s final. In those situations, you cannot go looking for resilience, hoping to find it. You need to know it’s there.
“The hardship makes you appreciate it as you get older, definitely,” said Kelly. “For the seven or eight lads from 2013 it’s mighty for them as well, who have stuck the course. Like, we’ve been beaten in four Munster finals [actually five], got a bit of stick for not backing up that 2013 All-Ireland, even though it’s a different team. For the likes of John Conlon, Davy Mc [Inerney], those type of characters, that makes it extra sweet.
“I said last week, it’s appreciation more than anything. Eleven years ago we were coming off underage success thinking ‘Jeez, this is mighty – you turn up and you win, or you get to finals year in year out’. When you do that in your first or second year in senior you think it’s kind of run of the mill.”
It was an important game for Kelly. Since 2013, when Clare won the All-Ireland, and he was, by acclaim, the Hurler of the Year, he had played four championship matches in Croke Park without expressing the full range of his gifts. In three of those games, he was hidden in plain sight for long periods. In the All-Ireland semi-final this year, as Christy O’Connor has pointed out, Kelly went 47 minutes without a possession, before his late surge shaped the outcome.
Being Tony Kelly generated unending expectations and, in a sense, those expectations were his creation too. He had done too much to fire everyone’s imagination. It seems extraordinary now, but he didn’t win his second All-Star until 2020, seven years after his first; in four of those seasons, he didn’t even make the long list of nominees.
His contact with Brian Lohan started with Fitzgibbon Cup teams in UL and has blossomed in a Clare dressing room. His best Clare performances under Lohan have exceeded anything Kelly did in 2013 or in the years that followed. There is a chemistry between them that is widely acknowledged but not explicit.
“Since he [Lohan] has come in, everything has been for the betterment of Clare,” said Kelly. “Everything from a behind the scenes standpoint. We were probably in the media pre-Covid for not having our shit together. Our centre of excellence was always on it [the media]. We were never on it for an unbelievable match or performance, it was always, ‘What’s going on in Clare?’ or ‘Who is rowing with who?’
“But since he came in, he cleaned up everything behind the scenes. Then from a players’ point of view, he just has us eating out of the palm of his hand. Because he played and was such a legend, he has that the minute he walks into the dressing-room. He is teak tough in how he comes across in the media, but to us, he would defend you to the hilt. He is tough, he is a sound man as well behind it all, if you can believe that. He has a softer side to him. He is just a legend.”
Cork will experience some of the suffering now that Clare have endured over the years. It was Michael Heseltine who said that “he who wields the knife never wears the crown,” after he had led the toppling of Margaret Thatcher as Tory leader but lost the leadership race to John Major.
For Cork to have beaten Limerick in two thunderous matches and not win the All-Ireland is a bitter pill to swallow.
Cork saved their season by completely revamping their approach. Against Clare in April not one Cork puck-out landed on their full-forward line. A fortnight later, they bombarded the Limerick full-back line with long range missiles.
On that spellbinding night in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Cork harvested a staggering 3-15 from their puck-outs, 3-10 by going long; by the semi-final against Limerick that number had fallen to 1-11, 0-9 by going long. Still good. On Sunday, it was just 0-7. Not nearly enough.
Cork will reflect and regroup. The cultural changes that Pat Ryan has generated in the dressing room has reformed Cork from a streaky outfit capable of anything or nothing to a team of substance. On Sunday, they showed remarkable resilience in the second half and in extra-time to keep coming back.
But it is the winners who get to tell that story.
