Clare earn late encore

The great opera that is the Clare hurling revival rolls on for another performance next weekend. For a while yesterday, when faced with a young and daring Tipperary side, Clare looked as if they would expire gracefully leaving the last hurling championship of this century bereft of their charismatic presence. It's never that simple of course.

Conor Clancy, a relic of 1995 and just back but not slimmed after another injury, was sent in minutes from the end. He clawed one point back and then, as the game slipped into injury-time, picked up a pass from Niall Gilligan and hung in there till he was fouled in the Tipperary penalty area.

The melodrama kept oozing. David Fitzgerald is the Clare goalkeeper and he is also the Clare penalty taker. He made his way in the leisurely fashion of a gunslinger from his goal line to the point where he could see the whites of his couterparts' eyes. And then bang, the little man whirlwinded and the ball nestled in the Tipperary goal.

Injury-time, which in GAA games is always elastic, suddenly contracted sharply and vanished. Game over. All back to Pairc Ui Chaoimh next week. Not a whimper of complaint from the 42,382 present.

This great rivalry which has defined hurling in the last half of this decade gets another airing then. In the Clare dressing-room they were greeting the news warily. Reality never gets greeted with open arms.

"We got away with it," said Ger Loughane. "Next week if Tipp play like that and Clare play the way they played, well we'll lose. Six days and we have to improve a lot. We won't have luck like that again."

The return of some luck was one of the few things they brought away from a difficult day. Through last year's great journey if it wasn't for bad luck, they wouldn't have had any luck at all.

Tipperary, a team at a different stage of development, at another pitch of appetite, took the day in as part of the bigger picture. They seemed to have the game wrapped and sealed minutes from the end when Paul Shelly prompted an extraordinary save from Fitzgerald.

Under new management and experimenting with new players it was a small relief to find yesterday that they could hit the high notes. "I think at the end of the day, there's not a lot you can do," said manager Nicky English of the job done. "Just create the right atmosphere and environment. We don't look for credit. The players take responsibility. They cross the white line and they are on their own. They went for everything today.

"We haven't a lot to lose, we can play loose. We have some players and they'll be around for a long time. The role of the manager is a bit exaggerated. I've always said there's not a lot to it except creating right environment and atmosphere. We have some experienced players and some who have no inhibitions. That's a nice mix." Both managers and most spectators were impressed by the way in which the 1999 hurling championship had exploded to life so thrillingly yesterday. On a day when people quietly expected Tipperary to fold their hand early, the sight of Clare being asked to dig deep, and deeper still, signified the re-emergence of hurling's aristocracy. Tipperary, beaten in their last three championship meetings with Clare, are back.

They had their difficulties before yesterday's game. John Leahy, their talismanic forward, was curtailed by a calf strain, shifting the responsibility even more acutely onto the shoulders of his young team-mates. Yet the quality of play, especially from Tipperary's young defenders, was astonishing at times and provided the platform for the forwards to score 18 points, a tally which would win most championship games.

"I know what hurling was like in the 1980s, it wasn't as good as that," said English of the fluency and tempo of the game in the second half when the prospect of elimination began seriously to worry the teams.

In the end, it was David Fitzgerald of Sixmilebridge who erased the difference between the sides. Whatever calm he felt won't be felt in bookies as the boards are changed this week.

"I suppose they have to go in favourites. They scored 18 points, we scored 2-12. Tells it's own story," said the goalkeeper. The man who performed the last great magic, deserves the last word.