When Tipperary and Clare come together on the scrabble patch of Pairc Ui Chaoimh tomorrow, great will be the cataclysm and dark will be the skies. Something biblical always happens between the sides who have fashioned the bitterest rivalry of the hurling decade.
The two games which laid down the basis of the current relationship between the counties still linger in the memories of those involved. 1993 and 1994, the years when Tipperary went from the height of their powers to having grudgingly handed Clare the baton as market leaders in Munster.
The animus which has been at the centre of games between the sides was born then. Tipperary, grinning and swaggering to an 18point win one year, saying goodbye to Babs Keating in the aftermath of a four-point defeat 12 months later.
1993 was about Tipperary trying to reassert themselves at the top table, swatting Clare out of their way in the process. The following months were about Clare's sense of grievance.
The Clare team's inchoate sense of itself as a collective about to reverse the grain of dour decades of hurling failure isn't reflected in the sense of grievance they carried away down the Ennis Road from Limerick that day in 1993. All they wanted was revenge . . .
July 4th, 1993
Gaelic Grounds, Limerick
Tipperary - 327
Clare - 2-12
Winning is an acquired trait and at last in 1993 Clare thought they were acquiring it. They beat Limerick and they beat Cork, who had overcome Wexford in a three-game epic of a league final. Only Tipperary left in the Munster final . . .
Anthony Daly: "My brother Pascal - he's dead since, too - Pascal was home from England and there are eight of us in the family and well he was home for the final and we were all inside to meet him. At the time, Len Gaynor (Clare's manager then) used to do this ritual - he'd be up around Clare the night before games. He'd call into a few houses. Cyril (Lyons) and Sparrow (Loughlin) and John Russell and my own were the houses he called to.
"He called into our house and the place was full. Uncles and first cousins and the whole works, who hadn't seen Pascal in maybe a couple of years. Len arrived in and he went pale. `Get up to bed you and tell them all to come back tomorrow night'."
Len Gaynor: "I remember calling into Anthony Daly's house and there was a bit of a party going on alright. That was the innocence of it in Clare at the time. Getting into a Munster final was such a big thing. Looking back it was easy enough to say they were wrong, but at the time it just seemed like hype. There's no way of getting used to that except through experience." Jamesie O'Connor: "I don't know how right we were. I missed all the hype. I was in college at the time and I was more concerned with my finals than anything else. If I recall rightly, I was just finished my finals on the Friday. I had enough on my mind to occupy me."
Anthony Daly: "We were wrong for it. We were so caught up in the occasion. We went to the Greenhills Hotel the next morning and I remember I had a car pass for the family to get in behind the pitch and they came out to the Greenhills and I went out and had a good old chat with them outside, and they drinking pints. Every time we've gone into the Gaelic Grounds since we've had our heads down between our knees looking at the floor, but that day we were looking everywhere."
Fergie Tuohy: "It was all new. We were meeting everyone we knew in the Greenhills and then there was some talk as to whether we'd walk to the ground. We hopped into the cars and we drove up bumper to bumper through the crowds to the ground. Not ideal."
Anthony Daly: "People in Tipp had doubts about Anthony Crosse and he just destroyed me. I went away on the booze the week afterwards and I was useless for the club when I came back. Useless. "I was after getting Man of the Match against Cork and had played well against Limerick. Then the first ball in dropped behind (Pat) Fox and John Moroney, Lord have mercy on him, and we were too near to it, myself and Anthony Crosse. I said if it breaks it'll beat the two of us, so I took two steps backwards anticipating the break and, sure enough, it broke and he shot down his left hand and drove it over the bar for a point. Everyone sees me standing three yards off him."
Jamesie O'Connor: "I remember at halftime Tim Crowe (Clare selector) having a right cut off the backs. I don't remember what Len Gaynor said, but I remember Tim having a go off the backs. In the two previous matches the backs adopted the attitude that they would get out in front and have a cut and I remember Tim saying: `We said we wouldn't play from behind and where has it got us'."
Conal Bonnar: "That day was surreal. Our first 11 shots on goal we scored 1-10. We could see them sagging everywhere. Any team would, especially at that stage of development. They would be different now. If we scored 1-10 with our first 11 shots this weekend we'd need to do the same with the next 11. Back then they buckled. We scored 2-11 in the first 25 minutes, I think. I remember John O'Connell going off before half-time and thinking there's a fine hurler and he's been taken off."
Jamesie O'Connor: "After about 25 minutes John O'Connell was taken off. He was captain that year and one of the guys I really looked up to. He'd be good to you and he was a really great hurler. I looked around and there were people struggling everywhere, holes being plugged here and there. It was just a case of keeping your head above water."
Fergie Tuohy: "I came on for John O'Connell. Not much that could be done by then. We'd been looking forward to the game so much. I had been really disappointed not to be picked and was just hoping I'd get to play. By the time I came on it was all over and it was still the first half."
Anthony Daly: "I remember them laughing. I was so bad at full back and John Russell was playing well at centre back, so they swapped us. I was worse out there, on Declan Ryan I think. I remember Bobby Ryan being brought on at midfield and asking (referee) Terence Murray how long was left and he held up the fingers - eight minutes. Oh no.
"Bobby had a shot at goal and he shot it wide and there was this general skit going around the Tipp lads. `Jaysus get back to corner back Ryan 'til we make a hurler out of you'. The sort of thing you'd do at training."
Nicky English (from his biography Beyond the Tunnel): "The first score I got was set up for me by Declan Ryan, he got the ball right in front of the Clare goal and seemed to hold on to it for an age before tapping it across to me for one of the easiest points imaginable.
"Declan would have had no problem scoring himself and I was well aware of that. If anything I felt he was treating me like a bit of an old cripple by holding on to the ball so long to set me up in scoring positions. So having scored I looked across at him and grinned . . ."
Anthony Daly: "English came on. Ryan went out of his way to give him a pass and he put it over and English was being marked by John Moroney and he turned after putting it over the bar and there was a bit of a skit between them. Now they interpreted it their way and we interpreted it our way, the way we remember it. I won't ever change the way I interpreted that. I mean they were hammering us. They couldn't ever see us being a threat again."
Nicky English (from Beyond the Tunnel again): "Given time it would emerge that many Clare people thought I was laughing at them, that I was poking fun at the predicament they now found themselves in."
Fergie Tuohy: "I wouldn't remember it really only I saw it on the telly later. They were trying to set him up for the score alright. Maybe they were having a laugh, but they probably didn't mean it that way, but it's like the `donkeys don't win derbies' thing. You use it all to your own advantage."
Conal Bonnar: "I remember Nicky coming on and Declan feeding him for that point. I suppose Declan could have scored, but he gave it to Nicky. I don't know if there was a laugh or a crack between them, but it didn't matter. We'd been around long enough to know they were a better team than they looked that day."
Jamesie O'Connor: "Nicky was unlucky, I suppose. The camera caught it and everything. Whatever way you look at it, though, we weren't ready. Raymie Ryan went on a solo run nearly the length of the field. No joking, but it took me from just before halftime to nearly 10 minutes in to the second half to recover from it. Just wasn't strong enough or fit enough. None of us were."
Len Gaynor: "Tipp hurled lanes through us. Great ball control. Put up huge scores. Not a lot to say at the time - couldn't convince players they have a chance of winning, they made an effort all the way through, just weren't able to cope with it. That team was at the height of their power and it all fell on top of Clare. I had strong faith in them from 1992 on, though. The enthusiasm they had was still there. They hadn't played to their potential and the experience was going to stand to them."
May 28th, 1994
Gaelic Grounds, Limerick
Clare - 2-11, Tipperary - ???
Tipperary had waltzed through the league. Babs Keating had been persuaded to stay on after the catastrophe of the 1993 All-Ireland semi-final with Galway. Tipperary planned for the long haul during the summer, but early on injuries crippled them. They had Clare in the first round . . .
Jamesie O'Connor: "Since 1989 themselves and Cork just had war every year. I think they were peaked for playing Cork in 1993. They were phenomenal. We were blown out of it because they were as sharp as that team ever looked. We maybe upset the apple cart and ended up meeting them when they were prepared for somebody else."
Babs Keating: "I never took 1993 at face value. The week after that game I brought the six backs together and made them watch a video of the game. Some of them didn't appreciate it, but Clare scored 2-12 against us, which is enough to win most championship games. If you looked at the video, our forwards and centrefield played as the game should be played, but the backs concerned me."
Jamesie O'Connor: "Tipp would have looked at 1994 in a different sense. We were this team they had put away the previous summer. We had this sense of waiting in the long grass for them. All we talked about for 12 months was beating Tipp. We had a meeting in January 1994 and after that the whole thing was embedded in our minds.
"Then there was John Moroney. When a guy dies, things get emotional anyway. I didn't hurl with John for that long, but he was so sound and so good to the young lads. We used that sadness as a motivator. We were going to do it for John Moroney and we had improved the team. Seanie McMahon came in and for fellas like myself and (Brian) Lohan it was our second year. We were ready and waiting."
Babs Keating: "We had half a dozen injuries in 1994. Nicky, John Leahy, Pat Fox, Paul Delaney, Joe Hayes and others. Anybody that didn't know we were in trouble wasn't paying attention."
Anthony Daly: "It took 'til the draw was made for the following year really for us to start getting over 1993. That October the draw was made for 1994. It was only then we started looking forward to it. They were favourites to hammer us again. I first met my wife that Christmas and I know the date of the Tipp game was embedded in her head within a few weeks. I've never trained as hard or as obsessively for anything.
"The other aspect was the saddest thing I've known in Clare hurling. John Moroney got killed in a car crash. John was a great character and a long-time member of the panel. He had been there in 1993 with me in the full back line and he was coming back for another crack. In fairness to Gaynor, he put it up to us and (Ger) Loughnane became involved which added to it. All those emotions were mixed in."
Len Gaynor: "It had a big impact when John died. John had been on the team longer than most of the boys, he was part and parcel of the panel, and dying so young and so tragically, it had a huge impact. Lads were hurt and when they looked at their hurling afterwards they had a sense of urgency. Life is pretty short after all. That welded them together as a unit. They worked on from there. There was huge determination in 1994. It was a question of keeping them calmed down in 1994."
Fergie Tuohy: "In 1994 we had worked on the fitness a great deal and we were doing these bleep-test fitness programmes in the University of Limerick. I remember a week or two before the game we had completed phase two of that. Tipperary were booked in to start it the Wednesday after they played us. That told us what they thought of us."
Conal Bonnar: "We were aware of the resentment since 1993. It wasn't a surprise. Any decent team beaten so badly will come back at you. We knew they'd take those things and turn them into a motivation for the following year. We knew in 1994 as well that we were missing so many players that we might be in trouble. We were never six or seven players a better team than Clare and losing those players was hard."
Anthony Daly: "Animal. That's how the dressing-room was. They had to calm us down. If we'd have gone out 10 minutes before we did we would have lost because we wouldn't have been able to see in front of us we were so wound up. We weren't as good as them, but we were driven that day."
Jamesie O'Connor: "I think we were lucky to settle in the first half. I'd imagine we were very emotional. We rode our luck a little bit. Once we stayed with them, though, we felt we were going to win it. Tommy Guilfoyle was after coming back and he scored two goals. Tommy and Cyril Lyons and Jim McInerney were a big help to us that day. They'd been around a bit." Babs Keating: "It was a bad game. It never really took off. I remember us hurling okay, but we never got away from them and as the game was wearing on I was thinking that we needed more in the bank. They weren't going to go away."
Anthony Daly: "I remember Fox had come on at half-time. He won a great ball, he had this thing where he'd lean right into you and lean back again and he'd have his bit of space. He won this ball he'd no right to at all and Davy Fitz never saw it. Nobody could stop it, but it grazed right over the crossbar. I think it's our day I said. I remember blocking down a ball that was going to set up a goal, got it down. We got a 70, I think, and it went in and we scored."
Babs Keating: "In the end only for a doubtful decision by a Cork referee we might have won it. Pat King had a free given against him and Clare went down the other end and got a goal. We had looked like scoring. Pat King was tripped and he gave a free against him."
Fergie Tuohy: "I came on as a sub again in 1994 and I was lucky enough to get the last score that put us four points ahead. We knew we had it then. Michael Ryan was taking a sideline ball and he fluffed it. Didn't rise it properly and it came to me. I don't know if it was that they didn't rate me or what, but I was all on my own. If I had to put it over the bar today I probably wouldn't. The game was over just after that."
Anthony Daly: "I'll always remember Babs coming into us after the game in 1993 and he made the most generous speech. He told us Clare hurling wasn't that bad and that we should stick with Len Gaynor.
"We beat them in '94 and he sent up Tommy Barrett. Len Gaynor was still in charge and I was waiting for Babs to come in to see what he'd say. I thought he'd say I came up here last year and I told ye to stick with it. Instead Tommy Barrett walks in."
Fergie Tuohy: "I remember Babs coming in 1993 alright. Someone so high profile, it would stick in your mind. It reminded me of Kerry of old and going into Cork football dressing-rooms and telling them they were grand fellas and to keep trying."
Jamesie O'Connor: "Funny the things that stick in your mind. Babs was in really quick in 1993. I think he was in our dressingroom before I was. I remember thinking how did he get in here so quickly?
"We thought if he was in in 1993, he could have been a man and came in in 1994. He claimed he couldn't get in, but sure Babs was Babs."
Babs Keating: "You know that tunnel under the stand in Limerick. Four hundred people trying to get in. I met Robert Frost (Clare chairman) and I said Robert there is no point in trying to pursue it. That has been thrown at me since. It wasn't the first time people haven't been able to get into the dressing-room. I'm known for going in when we are beaten. I was very close to Clare up to 1993, great friends with Robert Frost.
"I had great sympathy for them. I was that soldier playing football for Tipp for the same length of time. I wore the football jersey for more years and I know what it is like to wear the jersey and do your best and not break through. I'm annoyed to be condemned over that point. Clare were running golf classics here in Dublin for many years and they weren't cheap and my name was always the first in."
Conal Bonnar: "I don't remember the end of the game. You knew that Clare were starting this great celebration, that all hell was breaking loose, but for us it was just wanting to get in off the pitch away from it and shut the dressing-room door. I don't remember Babs quitting either. I think I was in the shower. It was said and I talked to him that night at the dinner and it was true. He was gone. Pity. He was good old company.
"Losing wasn't a huge disaster or surprise to us. We knew we were going to struggle without the players we were missing and that Clare were a good side. A lot of people around Tipp didn't see it that way. In every county there are a lot of people who don't follow things too closely, just come out for the big games each year. In their minds Tipperary should always beat Clare. It's not like that."
Babs Keating: "I had my mind made up the previous year. I'd wanted to leave then, but I was persuaded to stay. In 1994 I suppose I was a bit hurt over the Leahy thing. He got injured playing football. Leahy wasn't a footballer. I was in a position to say who was a footballer and who wasn't. I didn't believe he was good enough to play football for the county. All those players were injury-prone. You'd blink you're eyes and they'd be gone. I was a bit hurt over that. I came in after we lost to Clare and told the players I was gone."
Anthony Daly: "We went out that day to avenge our own name and deep down we didn't maybe think we'd win it, but we weren't going to be laughed at. It still goes down as the sweetest day of all just because of the circumstances." Jamesie O'Connor: "1993 was bad but 1994 was worse. In 1993 we were rookies and we had no idea what a Munster final was or what was required. I played badly in 1994 and I just thought it was worse because after beating Tipp the expectations were so high. Losing to Limerick was a terrible blow."
Anthony Daly: "It's still there, the bit of bitterness. There for them, too. More so for them now because of 1997 and getting beaten twice by us. For years they rubbed it into us and I'd say Clare people made no apology for 1997 and rubbing it into them. They want to avenge that and we want to avenge 100 years."
Babs Keating: "After those games the bitterness became even more apparent. It's still there and it will be a big thing on Sunday now. It doesn't make games dirty, but whatever it does, well there is something between the two teams.
