National Hurling League Final/Clare v Kilkenny, Monday, Thurles, 4.30: Rather than trying to recapture the past, Seán McMahon is proud to be part of something fresh with Clare's hurlers, writes Keith Duggan
After Clare's remarkable goal haul in Wexford last Sunday, Seán McMahon drove back towards the west idly reviewing his team's league trajectory. Eleven years of senior hurling had taught him to largely ignore the adolescent mood swings and bursts of form that tend to visit teams through the months of spring. Nonetheless, Clare's turnaround was mildly satisfying, not because it suggested rosy days ahead but simply because the mere thought of a league final was far removed from the equation after Galway inflicted a comprehensive defeat on them midway through the competition.
"After that game, it was very depressing," he recalled sitting in the West County hotel in Ennis during the week. "Because we had been focusing on doing well against Galway, we had a fair bit of work done and then we went backwards again. At that point, we weren't holding much hope of even coming out of the group."
It was the players' reaction to Anthony Daly's sombre and angry rebuke that most pleased McMahon. As the only remaining member of the storming half back line in which Daly operated during his strident and highly successful captaincy, McMahon has inevitably come to be regarded as one of the last representatives of the charismatic Clare team that infused the redemptive summer of 1995 with a stern and dreamlike march to the All-Ireland. As with Davy Fitzgerald, the Lohan brothers and Colin Lynch, there is a tendency to portray McMahon's longevity as an attempt to reclaim something lost rather than to realise something fresh and new.
As he points out, "It is nearly four and five years since they have started saying that. But again, it is people's views and the perception is we have been around a fair while. And 10 years is a fairly long time, I suppose. It was just that we happened to be quite young when that team came to prominence. I mean, I am only 31. Whether it is our last shot or not is up to us."
To view the undimmed quest for excellence that McMahon and his peers seek out as something purely retrospective denies the very source that drives them on. In his second year with Clare, McMahon won an All-Ireland medal and was the Texaco Hurler of the Year.
Such early accolades might have sated many players and although McMahon's temperament has been the earth for many of Clare's livewire component parts, there is something quietly fierce about his constant presence in the heart of a defence that has never been less than committed.
And it would be impossible to maintain the requisite levels of concentration and skill and stamina if it were purely a matter of trying to recapture a time. To persistently link the surviving members of the 1995 entity with Ger Loughnane and all those colourful episodes and dramatic, sun-drenched afternoons is unfair.
McMahon has played nearly half his career with Clare post-Loughnane, has appeared in an All-Ireland final with a radically different Clare team. And he does not hide the fact he is enjoying playing under the voice and guidance of Daly, his former defensive partner.
When Cyril Lyons stepped down, there was a widespread view that Clare would go into a definite recession. Accepting the post would have been a task for anyone and with some of his old dressingroom buddies still around, there was a feeling it would be particularly dangerous for Daly to risk a return.
"But we players had so much respect for him and knew he came into a difficult position," explains McMahon.
"A lot of people said he was mad, that he should have stayed away until the team he played with had gone. But personally I felt it was a great decision and it is up to us as players to bear that out. The one thing I know about Anthony Daly is that he is in it for the good of Clare hurling. He is not looking for any personal gratitude and he knew coming in he would have to make tough decisions. He didn't walk in with his eyes closed. I think he has already shown he can make whatever decisions are needed.
"I think he has shown he has a good hurling brain. He is very open and he is courageous enough to try things out and stick with them, even if they don't work so well initially. He is his own man and was always his own man."
Watching Daly adapt in his new position has perhaps enabled McMahon to deal with the fact that all teams are constantly shifting states. He does not pretend to be oblivious to time and each season would be marked by the absence of a face that made the rituals of the GAA athlete's life all that more comforting - PJ O'Connell, Liam Doyle - but in recent times it has been more pronounced. He hurled all his life alongside James O'Connor and Ollie Baker and because they all operated in and around the middle third of the field, they seemed to come as a trinity. Leaving was a different matter.
"It is strange," he admits. "We drove to games together, headed to training together. You miss them around, definitely. Like, Ollie is up the country working so I don't see too much of him. And Jamesie is busy with the Clare minors and St Flannan's. They gave an immeasurable amount to Clare hurling and I don't think they left it lightly. I respected their decision and the way the game is you move on. We will catch up again soon enough."
McMahon has not felt any pang of ambivalence or doubt as autumn tumbled into autumn. He has always vaguely contented himself with the knowledge that he will spend enough years in the stands watching Clare. The old mantra of playing while you can is a good one. Talk turned to the phenomenon of burnout that has afflicted so many GAA players in recent years and of the triumphant return to the elite level by Brian Corcoran. The second blossoming of such a sumptuous sportsman is not necessarily good news for teams standing between Cork and success but as McMahon acknowledges, the renewal of faith "says a lot about who he is".
"Brian was always a brilliant hurler and a very decent fella as well. It was understandable that he made the decision to leave because he has so much football played as well and it was incredible, really, that he ever fitted it all in. But for him to come back was a good thing for the game. It was a brave decision, and he wasn't to know it would work out the way it did. And he got his reward."
It is a perfectly true point. When Corcoran concocted that late point in September's All-Ireland final, falling to his knees as he struck the ball under a Cork-coloured sky, it all seemed preordained and simple. But there are no guarantees. If there were, then Clare, having journeyed as far as the 2002 All-Ireland showpiece, would have turned back the clock against Kilkenny. But even as DJ Carey wheeled away in celebration, the black-gloved fist in the air to celebrate a goal from the first ball sent in around the Clare defence, something drained from the day. It would not be a day for anything other than the expected result and although Clare were outsiders to begin with, they endured a radical reversal of previous All-Ireland form in that they underperformed.
"That was the thing that was fierce disappointing, that as a group we were never really in the game. We struggled from the very start. I remember we got it back to three points in the second half and was thinking if we tagged on another one at that stage, maybe we can put a bit of pressure on, but ah, Kilkenny were just better than us that day. It was as bad as I have known."
He proposes that muted exhibition as the reason why Clare's last All-Ireland appearance is so often overlooked and why 10-year-old days still hold such candour.
The one constant of the Loughnane era is that from 1995 on, Clare were a team that were beaten rarely and never buried. It was ironic that it was Daly, who from the pulpit in Thurles denounced the tradition of Clare as the whipping boys of Munster, who was on the sidelines towatch his team get torn apart by Waterford. And it was hard not to compare the tension and emotion of that Waterford victory to the emerging team that Daly had once led.
"Being on the field that day was something I won't forget," McMahon says. "I never watched the video or anything but I remember how I felt. It was just a disaster for us.
"And yeah, it was an awesome performance by them. It had everything - pace, strength, speed, ruthlessness. They went for the kill and got it and then just stayed, no let-up. Any team, be it Kilkenny or Clare or whoever, would be proud of that performance. And we knew Waterford were capable of it and regardless of our state of mind, they were outstanding that day."
The poise and bravery with which Daly recovered from that setback spoke volumes. But it happened. And McMahon knows the day Clare take the field and are "not right" it could happen again. All their work this year has been with the championship in mind and while welcoming their recent string of victories, Daly has also poured cold water on them to some extent.
This week, they trained as usual with just half an eye on Monday's game against Kilkenny. As Seánie McMahon stood under the awning of the Clare County hotel, a light rain was beginning to spit and the car park was quieter than usual, as if everyone was embedded and waiting for the beginning of the hyped up Chelsea v Liverpool Champions League semi-final.
McMahon would spin the two minutes up the street to Cusack Park to train and hit frees. McMahon's strength and class aside, his prodigious striking from distance has been one of the great enduring weapons Clare have employed over the past decade. But in his easy-going way, he asserts it was something that developed by accident and he grew used to doing without ever worrying or thinking about too much. He would hit a few frees after training tonight.
"Probably not as many as I should do," he says, nodding to a local heading into the hotel. It would have been bedlam around here 10 years ago, when McMahon was really just a kid and Clare couldn't stop winning. It is harder to engage the public now but he believes the sport matters to the county now as much as it did then. He talks for a while about Clare's curiously lean underage record and believes that while winning minor and under-21 titles would be ideal, it is not the be all and end all.
"Just so long as we compete. Even if we are getting to finals every now and then. Even back in 1995, we didn't have great underage teams either. Ideally, you want to be winning Munster but even if that takes a while, we can always pluck a player from here or there.
"We probably didn't make the best of the success that 1995 and those years brought but it came out of the blue so it was hard. This time it might be different. I think the game needs a bit of a kick in the county and a good season by the seniors would help that."
A league final against Kilkenny in Thurles is only a beginning but it is a beginning. The beginning is where Seán McMahon finds himself every single May, 10 years of mostly magnificence or not, and it suits him just fine.
