’If you believe in what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter how much flak you get’

In a week when every conceivable tactical thread will be fed through the loom at one point or another, it’s well worth sitting one of the weavers down for a chat.

Clare selector Mike Deegan is that rare thing in hurling – an intercounty personality who not only acknowledges the existence of tactics in the sport but is happy to lean across a table and explain them.

Deegan landed at Davy Fitzgerald's right hand two years ago on the back of steering Cratloe to two county finals in a row, including the only Clare championship in the club's history in 2009.

Upon assessing the squad he, Fitzgerald and Louis Mulqueen would have at their disposal, it became pretty clear early on they weren't going to get very far playing the game on everyone else's terms. They would have to brain their way around the predominant brawn.

'Winning our own ball'
"Anybody who watches Kilkenny, it's all about winning your own ball," says Deegan. "Every one of their backs gets the ball, he drives it down the field. We were looking at that.

“The number of high catches you see Kilkenny able to do, they are fantastic at it. We knew full well there was no point hitting high balls down on top of Kilkenny backs or Tipperary backs and Galway would be a strong, physical team as well.

“You have to look at the other teams and see what we can do to combat that.

"Our big thing from the very start was if we are playing against big, strong teams and especially strong half-back lines, there was no point belting the ball down on top of them when you have the likes of Podge Collins trying to contest balls, or small, light players like Tony Kelly.

“You want to play the ball that suits your forwards rather than their backs.”

And so they schemed it out. Possession would have to be ten tenths of the law. It would be slow and piecemeal and anything but popular but Clare were going to have to find a way to keep the sliotar. If that meant short-passing, quick puck-outs, even just hand-passes to begin with, so be it.

“Everybody spoke last year about the fact we were trying to play a short game and it probably broke down a lot last year because the players were only learning what we were trying to do. It doesn’t break down as much this year because the players have got used to it and we don’t have to tell them what to do.

"Even when we have matches in training you're trying to get the second team to play like the opposition rather than like ourselves and they still play like Clare!

'We vary it as well'
"We have worked on that from the start and everybody knows we have worked on the short passing game. We have elaborated on that – we vary it as well. We play a lot more stick passes now. We started with hand passes last year."

It was anything but straight-forward, of course. The short-passing blueprint was an omelette that was always going to see plenty of eggs broken. And not just in training either – lots of mistakes were going to be made in matches too. In public. In earshot.

"There was no doubt about it, we were getting plenty of flak. But if you believe in what you're doing it doesn't matter how much flak you get and we believe it and the players believe it. Everyone was giving out about Donal Óg (Cusack), including Cork people, for the fact he kept pucking the ball to his corner back. It is changing and possession is a lot of the game. Without possession it is going to turn into a dogfight and the players we have aren't going to win a dogfight.

Different game plans
"We have been working for the past 18 months on different game plans and the way we play. In challenge matches we will try something different and this is kind of the fruition this year, of what we have been doing for the past 18 months. We've been trying different things and the players understand and buy into it. That's the big thing - there's no point having tactics if they don't buy into it. The big test of it was the Galway match."

That day, Clare dropped Pat Donnellan back as a sweeper in front of the full-back line in a plan that was custom-built with Joe Canning in mind. When Anthony Daly tried something similar with Alan Markham as Clare manager back in 2004 against Kilkenny, it brought a certain level of sneering.

"There's no doubt about it. The game is speeding up all the time and you have to use the space and the players you have. The fact we have such a young, fast, light team helps us in that regard. We're asking five forwards to do the work of six and the fact they are so light and so fast they are able to do it.

'Stop Joe Canning'
But you have to pick the tactics that will suit you ... especially the day against Galway, you have to try and stop Joe Canning. He is the main man and it worked for us that day, and it worked for us the last day against Limerick.

“Against Limerick we didn’t play Pat back as much as we did against Galway. You have to vary it depending on the opposition.”

Whatever they sketch out for Cork, it will make for compelling viewing on Sunday.