After four years of frustration, the county produced its first league and championship double and a host of brilliant memories
Clare manager Brian Lohan lifts the Liam McCarthy Cup and the League Cup during the GAA All-Ireland Senior Hurling Champions homecoming. Photograph: Tom Maher/Inphosits behind his desk in the eponymous auctioneering and financial services business in Shannon Town Centre. Work is a key motif. He had to throw himself into it to catch up after the team trip to the US in November and it usually tops the list of hurling virtues he details in answering questions about his team’s success.
One of the iconic images of the post-All-Ireland mayhem is of the two men embracing. Loughnane had said to his former full back that he delivered the Liam MacCarthy and that was all that mattered. The bottom line on any county’s annual report. Plain-spoken to the point of abrasiveness but ultimately a team player, he recounted during his career setting out to Loughnane’s house to argue some point of team selection, but halfway there deciding it was not his place to be telling the manager who to pick and instead turning back for home.
Earlier this month, Munster GAA named him their Manager of the Year, but a more personal accolade came from the team’s Hurler of the Year,We’ve a good group of players. They generally don’t need to be told where they’re going wrong and in many cases are driving the tutorials after games as much as the management“Brian has this persona and the media even get a colder version of it because maybe he doesn’t speak as fluently to the media as he does to us.
One player decided that the league was not for him. Shane O’Donnell’s phenomenal year is almost an advertisement for taking a break in the early months, but Lohan frowns at the idea that others might be tempted to skip the league and become Hurler of the Year. Calamity followed with a precise gift of the same nine points in the form of three preventable goals. Lohan was all but speechless afterwards.
Limerick's Shane O'Brien and John Conlon of Clare during the 2024 Munster GAA Senior Hurling Championship final, FBD Semple Stadium, Thurles, Co Tipperary. Photograph: Bryan Keane/Inpho They had other things going for them, however. Unlike previous years, there was no agonising over a near miss – the opposite: an underwhelming performance had created the imperative to improve, do better on the part of the players.
Tony Kelly had his most productive afternoon since returning from injury and O’Donnell was as usual electric, scoring 1-4 – the goal a signature combination of persistence and breathtaking technique. This was Lohan’s Rubicon. It had to be crossed or a third successive semi-final defeat by Kilkenny would have finished him.
Sufficiently early in the week for diagnosis and a slowly dawning but unexpectedly positive prognosis to emerge, the injury threw preparations into turmoil. “Sometimes you just have to stand back and ask, what more could we have done there? For the goal they got, it was a brilliant piece of attacking play and some of the other scores they got early on were just exceptional. At those moments you have to say they are exceptional scores and it will be hard to keep getting them and our time will come.”The season’s odd dynamic had played out. Cork revived their season and ended Limerick’s over the course of two extraordinary matches.
“Shane has got tremendous ability. Before I got involved, I would have said he’s a good hurler but he’s no Tony Kelly. Then you see him in training and just appreciate the level of ability he has, and such a strong mind. “Sometimes we might be looking for Shane to do more but with Tony, you’re often trying to get him to do less. Two different personalities.
“We’ve won an awful lot of games over the last three years, but we didn’t win the big games and you get criticised for that and have to deal with it. There were obviously calls we made this year that didn’t go right but we won the matches.”
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