Despite some recently seismic shifts in hurling management, Donal Moloney and Gerry O’Connor were always certain of a third season as joint Clare hurling managers – at least according to All Star forward nominee Peter Duggan.
Their ratification still had to go before the county board, but Duggan, the 2018 championship top scorer with 3-78 in Clare’s eight matches, had little doubt they would return.
“We always knew that they were going to stay on,” says Duggan. “I think they might just be looking for someone else to come in. I think that’s the only reason that it didn’t come straight out that they were coming straight back involved.
“And I knew from the under-21s, they’re hungry, they’d stay going until they’re told that you’re not going any longer like. They always have that bite in them in fairness to them.”
Before taking the senior job, Moloney and O’Connor won eight underage titles with Clare minors and under-21s between 2010 and 2014, before taking charge of the seniors in the winter of 2016.
Duggan has previously admitted he came close to quitting at the end of 2017, but an enjoyable run with his club Clooney-Quin brought back some of the joy: last weekend the club lost their quarter-final, to O’Callaghan’s Mills, but given how close Clare came in 2018, losing their All-Ireland semi-final to Galway after a replay, 2019 can’t come round fast enough.
“In fairness to Galway, everything we threw, they just didn’t let us get on top. I think if we had got that one point to get ahead, we might have been able to stay going, but we’ll have to look at it individually, where we fell down, that kind of stuff. In fairness we took a bit out of Galway for the final, but they are some outfit. But I found I enjoyed hurling a lot more this year and I think that’s the main reason. I find it’s a lot easier to play good hurling when your team is playing good hurling. In other years I might have got the chance and done absolutely nothing but luckily enough the team were going well this year and things worked out a lot easier for me because the team were going well.”
