Loughnane roused these Rebels

Munster SHC semi-final Clare v Cork: Tom Humphries looks back on the heady 1990s when Clare ruled the roost, especially in Munster, and Cork had to learn the hard way how to tame them

We remember the eternal blood feud between Clare and Tipp, we recall Limerick's muscular challenge to Clare's hegemony, we'll pass on to our grandchildren the details of Clare's summer of '98 but very seldom do we devote any time or thought to the fate of Cork during the Loughnane years.

After that high summer of madness in 1998 Cork restored order to the land of hurling and ended the era of the upstart with an All-Ireland win which set a pattern. Since then the spoils have been divided out among the blue bloods. Clare and Offaly and Wexford have become part of a new modernistic structure known as the Big Eight but when the aristocracy speak in private they speak only of the big three.

Cork, Kilkenny and Tipp run hurling like Mafia families might run a big city. They do it well. All the more surprising when we look back at the 90s to find Cork hitting a trough which involved four championship defeats in succession to Clare.

Indeed Cork managed to lose to Clare back in 1993 before Clare had fully evolved into the beast they would become. Clare beat Cork 2-7 to 0-10 and ran up an account of 20 wides in the process.

For lads like Eoin Cleary and Declan Tobin and John O'Connell and the late John Moroney it would be a career highlight. For Cork the dark years were just beginning. Most of what they learned was at the hands of Clare.

Loughnane was born on the June 4th, 1995, in the Gaelic Grounds when Clare played Cork in the semi-final of the Munster hurling championship. A version of Loughnane had existed and walked the planet for a few decades before that but that version was placid and containable. In Limerick that day Loughnane exploded into life, cajoling and running the game like a bug-eyed cowboy rousting cattle.

All the signs were there. The pitch incursions, the waving arms, the naming of Eamonn Taaffe in the selected 15 only for Sparrow O'Loughlin to play. A terrible beauty had been born.

Cork should have won the game from pure race memory and they almost did. The game finished helter-skelter with goals and incidents and controversies crammed into the final 15 minutes. Goals from Sparrow O'Loughlin for Clare and Kevin Murray for Cork kept the excitement at fever pitch.

But late on Seánie McMahon famously broke his collarbone after a shoulder from Mark Mullins.

Loughnane had played all his cards so McMahon went corner forward. He went for a ball with Timmy Kelliher, who tried to play it first and run on to it. Timmy got the first part right but the ball ran out for a Clare sideline cut.

"We thought we were there that day," says Cork's Ger Cunningham " I remember that cut. Seánie McMahon was up at corner forward holding the shoulder. He won the sideline ball and Fergie Touhy hit it. It was one of those which was hanging there and I wasn't too sure whether to come or stay. I stayed on the line. Ollie Baker got the goal. It just glanced off his stick. All hell broke loose after that."

Baker had been brought on as a sub and, failing to thrive in midfield or at wing forward, had been moved to full forward as a last throw of the dice.

Cork still believed. They moved the ball upfield and Alan Browne had a shot for an equaliser come back off the post. It found Kevin Murray's hand amidst much excited squealing from the stand but Frank Lohan intercepted Murray's shot.

When it ended, Johnny Clifford quietly stepped down from the position of Cork manager, his two-year term having ended with losses to Limerick and to Clare.

"Bad, bad days," as Cunningham recalls.

Clare's long-anticipated arrival was so emphatic when it happened, that by 1997 Cork considered themselves unlucky to have been drawn against them in the championship.

Jimmy Barry Murphy had taken over from Clifford and his term had begun badly. Cork's invincibility in the Páirc (Uí Chaoimh) was ended.

"In 1996 we were annihilated by Limerick in the Páirc. It was a diabolical performance which was a shock to the system. We set about trying to rebuild with younger players. That's where it started but by then Clare were the benchmark in Munster. They were what we aspired to. After Limerick I realised how far we had fallen. I think Clare noticed too," says Cunningham.

"We had a very poor league campaign coming into the 1997 championship. We were trying out a lot of players. We played Kilkenny in a challenge game a couple of weeks beforehand and we played so badly we were a bit worried that we'd get another beating like Limerick had given us. In fairness, the players rose to the occasion."

Clare began comfortably but Barry-Murphy's team had shed half a generation's worth of players and underage success was beginning to stack up to an amount of expectation. Cork always felt they had the hurling. They finished the game strongly. At half-time they had turned around with just a point between the teams.

"At half-time we had a good chance. We missed a couple of chances. We gave them a very big fright the same day."

Clare were a point ahead at half-time when Loughnane put on Stephen McNamara and David Forde for Niall Gilligan and Conor Clancy. O'Loughlin went to full forward and scored a point straight from the restart. He added another two within minutes.

Seánie McGrath started out in the big time that day. He began well too. He scored the first point of the game and added a second before half-time. Cork were always just coming up a little short.

"The second went wide actually but it was counted. I just remember the disappointment of losing and the joy of playing well," McGrath recalls.

"Clare were strong at the time and you didn't like to think of who'd be marking you. We felt we had a decent chance. Just enjoyed it. Just 20-odd thousand at it. All the family there and the wife is from Clare. Bit of spice. Very disappointing for the team."

McGrath played on Frank Lohan in the first half and was switched into the shadow of Anthony Daly after the break.

"Jesus, but Daly was a gangster. An operator. It was mind games from the beginning. He was a great player but he was able to wind any lad up. Deep down, as hard though I was trying to bate him, I was getting great joy out of being marked by a really great player of the time. Clare had that aura about them."

Aura or not, McGrath scored three points in the second half. Not enough. Again Clare had it in them to muster a late goal.

"McNamara got the goal. Ger O'Loughlin set him up. And that was it. I just remember the disappointment. We had nearly pipped the team of the 90s. We had no back door so we were gone.

"We were beaten but we thought we had done well. We were as good maybe as anything else in Munster except for Clare."

Barry-Murphy remembers the experience as being more positive than negative.

"We put Brian Corcoran back at centre back that summer and decided to build around him. We'd been messing about with him for a while but we decided to go with that and with four or five new players. We put a lot of respect back into the jersey that day."

Cunningham had just one more championship left in him. Defeats to Clare were becoming part of the weave in his latter years.

"I remember the goal well. It broke from Ger O'Loughlin behind John O'Driscoll, coming across from right corner forward, on to McNamara's left hand. I knew exactly where he was going to put the ball but it was an excellent shot, an excellent goal. I knew where it was going. I felt I might have blocked it. I was disappointed."

As a metaphor for Clare's enduring excellence at the time that was perfect. You always knew what they were going to do to you but they still did it.

Cunningham's last game would be against Clare. It would be the summer of 1998, and once again Cork had drawn Clare from the hat. It was a crazy hurling summer and the business of the league semi-final would soon be forgotten.

Cork had beaten Clare by 11 points in the National League semi-final onMay 3rd, a double header in Thurles.

The theorists of darkness had it that Loughnane had taken his team to the Garda College in Templemore on the morning of the game and run them till their legs were naught but bloody stumps.

In fact Clare had just had a light puck-around that morning but by then Loughnane's notoriety was so great people were willing to believe anything of him.

The truth was that in 1998 Clare and Cork were in different places. Cork won the league, beating Waterford in the final. They beat Limerick in the first round of the championship.

On the Tuesday before the Clare game JBM's boys got a standing ovation in the Páirc when they left training.

"In hindsight," says McGrath, "we had the big win in the league semi-final, then we played Waterford and then we played Limerick, and we were on a high after three big games, three great games. We were too cocky.

"We're always cocky in Cork going into games but we had won very little to be so cocky. We expected to beat them. We fell for the league result. They were very strong."

Cunningham believes that Cork had had no option but to place the belief in their league form that year.

"We were in the same position then that Limerick were in this year. You have a young team and you need to take the league seriously and set targets for yourself as you build. There were rumours about Clare but it didn't matter. We played well that day. They didn't. It certainly handed them a lift for the championship but there wasn't anything we could do about that.

"Losing in 1998 was a knock-back for us and the league semi-final raised the motivation levels for them. They blew us out of the water."

Whatever about Loughnane strewing the path with red herrings during the league, by the time the summer came anything was possible. To the bemusement of an increasingly irritated media, Loughnane fed another dummy team when Michael O'Halloran and Conor Clancy were named but Brian Quinn and Alan Markham were actually selected.

The manner of the defeat shook Cork to the bone. They felt they'd almost got a grip on Clare in 1997. This time they were close with 10 minutes remaining, Clare just two ahead. Then they put the foot to the floor. Daly had a score off Seánie McGrath.

"He was always looking to score a point," says McGrath "That was demoralising to see a wing back score a point. He had this high striking style where he was hitting the ball up at shoulder level and he was really difficult to hook. I'd a tough day on him that day. And all the usual chat out of him too."

Daly unlocked a landslide: points from Jamesie O'Connor, Gilligan, Alan Markham, Eamonn Taaffe and O'Connor once more.

"Until 1998 with 10 minutes to go we were level and they beat us by eight points. They were powerful. They could pull away from you. Mentally strong. We worked hard for 1999 and all our games we pulled away at that stage," says Barry-Murphy.

"That was the game that we learned most from. You don't just play for 70 minutes. You're stepping it up for the last 10 or 15.

"We were disappointed but we got a lot out of it. We said we'd let league be what it was. We won a national title. We learned that championship is different.

"Clare knew that. We had a young team still. Lot of lads came of age that day. Getting over the finish line is always tough. The way Clare beat us gave us a springboard for the next year. It was a psychological lesson."

For Cunningham, it was the end of the road. A clean sheet but the end of the road nonetheless.

"That was my last championship game. We put a lot into that championship. We had made progress.

"We beat Limerick in the first match and there were questions asked of me when they got late goals. There was some finger-pointing, which wasn't good for me at 37 or 38. I sensed it was the end. It was the right time to go. Jimmy had the backbone of the side together by then."

By then Barry-Murphy had indeed a vision of what he wanted. Cork's under-21 successes had given him a harvest of good young players, and Teddy Owens was offering physical preparation to the team which was putting them up on the same level as anyone else in the country in terms of strength and fitness. They beat Clare in 1999 and never looked back.

"We brought the physical stuff to the table that year," says McGrath. "Mark Landers was a good captain. A few hours before the 1999 Munster final he took a snippet out of the 1998 game and showed it to us in Dundrum Golf Club. I couldn't believe looking at the five-minute snippet how tough they were and how many of us were pushed aside. By then Teddy Owens's work was paying off for us. We were light and fleet-footed but by 1999 we were definitely stronger.

"There was a feeling in the camp that we'd come at some stage but Clare were so dominant that people in Cork had this idea we'd never catch them, so that 1999 Munster final was huge pressure and winning it was a great relief.

"We learned a lot of what we knew about winning from Clare. They were the team of the 90s. They should have won the All-Ireland in 1998. They got messed around. They should have won three."

According to Barry-Murphy, the nucleus of Cork is still pretty much the same.

"They grew up in those Clare games. I remember in 1999 so much work went into isolating Seánie McMahon. We had to undermine his influence on the game as he was the key for them. Fergal McCormack did a great job on him, getting him out of centre back and running so we could exploit the spaces.

"He was a key figure and we only got going when we learned to deal with individuals like that. If you look at 1999 and the run to the All-Ireland, we won nearly all our games pulling away in the last 10 minutes. Perhaps that was the last thing that Clare taught us."

They go back at it tomorrow, neither side afraid of the other, both teams nourished by parts of their own history.