Reality bites for Clare's hurlers

MOVING ON. Not too long ago the hurlers of Clare; crossed a border.

They left behind the world of looking back. Turned their faces to the skyline of the future. Relieved they were too.

Four, almost five months of celebration and adulation have left them bloated, if not physically, then mentally. There is a certain comfort, then, in ing on a cold night here in Crusheen and returning to first principles, searching for the gaunt, hungry version of them selves which got lost somewhere last winter.

They are back from Thailand, back from a trip to the States, back from trips to London and to every town, club and school in the county of Clare. Back to earth, back to reality, back to Crusheen. Looking forward.

Success has forced the county board to put their hands into their pockets with regard to Crusheen. Mind you, the delving hasn't been too deep. Senior intercounty players no longer have to push each other's cars out of the mud when they finish training.

The carpark is gravelled and grey. The pitch looks anaemic under the pale glow of the floodlights. The road from Ennis to Gort provides a border on one side of the pitch. Everywhere else the land is flat and bare, with scarcely a protective tree to beat back the elements. Tonight the wind scours the pitch, biting through the bones and into the marrow. Close your eyes and think of Semple Stadium on a warm day.

C'mon boys. Shake it out. Shake it out. We've two hours ahead of ye."

Crusheen. It's Mike Mac's show. A two hour routine under the watery floodlights during which the Scariff man changes in and out of personalities. Barking Sergeant Major. Dry Comedian. Stern Father. Anything to cajole the boys along, a stream of consciousness cattle prod.

Get down. Down and do 20. Hold it. Do things properly.

From now to September we do things right. Look at PJ's new haircut. Hasn't made you any faster, PJ. You're not taking pleasure in those push ups, are you? Hope not. Lucky they don't give awards for this sort of thing. Ye wouldn't have the strength to lift them. No walking, talking or dilly dallying. Run. I'd hate to be the first of ye to drop the hands below the shoulders.

How ye got awards? My God. The fun goes out of it when some one fucks ye out of the championship boys, on your faces same as any other year. Is that what ye want? Let's go, let's go, let's go.

NOW! Will ye be long girls? Will ye be finished the nattering soon? Don't mind me at all.

Mike McNamara is wearing a woolly hat and his breath makes big clouds every time he lets a roar out of him. He's nearly 50, he tells the boys, nearly 50 and he can do the exercises better then they can. They're well used to the sound of his bark by now. It's hard to be a decent hurler in Clare and not to have spent nights with Mike Mac chasing you around a pitch somewhere.

McNamara is a prophet belatedly gaining recognition in his own land. He has never failed to take a Clare team he's looked after to a Munster final. He's taken Clare minor and junior" teams to All Ireland finals. Every year he's had a team in the provincial final, yet twice he's been sacked and once he's walked out.

"That's what I tell these boys. People forget. People forget."

By now he knows who's who out on the training pitch Just by the posture of the silhouettes lurching through the darkness. His head is an inventory of the aches and pains, the strengths and weaknesses of all the boys. He knows the lads who like to drop the effort down when his back is turned. He has them all off by heart.

Tonight is the second night back at Crusheen for the All Ireland champions. The riotous clamour of last September seems a lifetime away. The world is looking forward. Nobody arrives out in Crusheen with any credits gained for having been a good boy last year.

"I like to make sessions - humoursome. We would consider this gentle enough. Most of the things being done should have been done faster. They've had five months of carousing. They're tough men, given what some of them have been through. They'll do four sessions this week, five next week, back to four."

Mike Mac and Tony Considine push the players through the evening. McNamara's trademark is his emphasis on upper body strength. The boys find the wind somewhere for the running, but it is the tortuous exercises which send the gasps of pain exploding like fireworks in the night.

This is Wednesday. The first session on Monday broke down after an hour and a half. Like flogging a dead horse, Mike Mac decided.

He brought them into the dressingroom and opened up on them.

"I explained the folly of their ways. The public have short memories. That's what I told them. I opened up. Ten pints of Guinness and fellas slapping you on the back, sure that's the land of fantasy. Only 12 months back people were talking about hurling in a different light. What are you wasting your time with it for, they'd be saying."

Mike Mac's sessions have evolved through common sense. He's had letters from different people and different coaches inquiring about methods and he has replied to them all the same way.

"I see what I have, I itemise the weaknesses and I work on that. When we started here we had a grand bunch of hurlers with no body strength. Anthony Daly and Brian Lohan had fine hurling in them, for instance. Anthony could do five push ups, Brian could do two.

"That had to change. Sean Mc Mahon needs work on his legs this year. I itemise it and work on these things. Most of the time I think I get it right. If I get it wrong this year I'll be sacked."

See? People forget.

The memory lingers in the muscles longer than it does in the brain. On Wednesday night limbs were still complaining about Monday night. Anthony Daly was just glad he'd missed Monday.

Work has taken Daly to Dublin for the past few months. On Monday, thinking of the lads in Crusheen, he stepped out of his hotel and ran as far as Stephen's Green. Then back again. About 15 minutes worth. It made a dent in his guilt if not his fitness levels. On Wednesday he got driven by a representative of the team's sponsors all the way to Crusheen. Having a sponsor means never having to feel guilty. The memory of Crusheen will linger in his limbs for the rest of the week.

"Mike Mac's training is different. Shoulders and the arms and the upper body. He's always into that. Hardening everything up. It hits us badly. He's changed us. Things like the press ups, you would always take it for granted that you could do it, but you couldn't. It stood to us last year. Hopefully it will stand to us again."

Being captain brings its responsibilities.

"I can manage the running, but things he'd do with the body you'd be in pain for. You don't want to be seen to be the one to give in. You go as hard as you can and if you die, you die. The fella who has something left and isn't giving it is the worst. In fairness, any dossers were weeded out long ago. Most of us are glad to be back to decent living and off the liquor. Glad until we go to the hill in Shannon next Wednesday anyway.

The hill in Shannon: 140 metres of sharp gradient. What Ger Loughnane calls "a grand hill". Up it 35 times for each player. Permitted 35 seconds to get up. By the end of the night the legs have no feeling left, the hips burn, the head swims. Men ask questions of themselves.

"We'd a lot more done this time last year," says Daly. "We worked from September, right through until Christmas. This year was different. You'd wish now that you had the work done. The first few weeks and the hill. They're the worst part of the year.

"Nobody's puking yet though."

PEOPLE might forget, but Anthony Daly won't. He remembers the States in early December. "New York especially is full of Clare people. Many a heartache and many a sad day for those people. They hired a hall in Yonkers racecourse. They went mad. Crazy when we came up the steps with the cup. To see what it meant. You'd have to have seen their faces."

Getting away together as a team meant a lot. For years they had looked on in bewilderment as their neighbours Galway took off to the sun every winter. One year Galway failed to score in the second half of a league quarter final and then got beaten by five points in the All Ireland semi. They still took off to Tenerife.

"We've been mad for a chance like that for a few years. Always at this time of year we'd be talking about Galway and how lucky they were."

Then there was the week after the final. Coming home with the cup. For a 26 year old getting carried by his own people into his own place is quite a thing.

"Aye. It was emotional. Boys that you hurled with and people you grew up with seeing them all. We were wrecked that night. I went home to bed. On Tuesday then we all met in the pubs in Clarecastle. The singsong started. That was the best day of all. You'd be brought back down to earth pretty quickly, people be talking about all the ball Johnny Dooley won off you, no thanks to you Daly that we won it."

With all those good times under the belt, with all the achievement and all the joy, comes the danger of never finding that version of themselves again, never being so hungry or so sharp or so innocent. Daly recognises it, but also recognises the character of his team.

"Twelve months ago we were doing this and boys would bp wondering what we were doing it all for. For another bad beating. Frank Lohan is up from Cork for training these nights. Frank wasn't up last year. He was studying and that was it. We look around and the new fellas on the panel are fitter then most of us. We have the taste of it. We are coming at it from the other side now.

"Different challenges. Lots of people want what we had."

He tells a story.

He's been on the panel for six or seven years now. Three weeks after the All Ireland final there was a tournament against Tipp played down in Ballina. Daly has seen those tournaments every year, there'd be a team put in the Clare Champion and seven or eight subs listed to go down there, and on the day Clare would be looking for a few Ballina fellas or a Tipp player to play with them.

"It was the day after the county final this year. Loughnane asked me if I'd go along. 'I won't ask you to play,' says he. I went down expecting the usual crack. There was about 28 guys there. Myself and Fergal Hegarty were the only two regulars. They were all mad for it."

"New lads are being unearthed. A fella from Scariff called Barry Murphy, he's very handy. Colin Lynch, got sick last year, he's back. Ronan O'Hara. Good to see us pushed a bit. Even at this time of year you'd be looking over your shoulder."

On Wednesday night, on the occasions when he looked over his shoulder, Cyril Lyons saw nothing but the reddened faces of those younger than him. Looking over his shoulder, too, he can see 14 or 15 seasons of this type of toil. Thirty seven next birthday. Having been to the mountain top, what has persuaded him to come to Crusheen for another winter?

"I'm not persuaded yet," says Cyril, "I'm feeling my way. I might realise I'm past it. I'll get some strength up and then see if I have anything to offer when we get hurleys in our hands."

He isn't entirely sure what has him here. He spoke to Ger Loughnane and Ger was forceful in his encouragement and, well, "New Year comes round and you get a rush of blood to the head and you re back out there. I've been through a fair bit at this stage and it hasn't killed me yet."

Cyril is wiry and naturally athletic. When the team run any sort of distance at all he's out there at the front of the pack pounding out the paces. Mike Mac's routines punish him though. He's had nights out here when he's asked questions, put everything in balance.

"The way we trained last year paid off, so there are no questions anymore. Proved itself in the finish last year. Won the All Ireland. There was a time when we all wondered. Not just me. We hadn't been used to two hour physical sessions. Ever."

The questions ended on the Saturday before the Munster final last year. The boys did a session in the afternoon, a real, hard, ballbreaking session in the mid afternoon heat. It was over before they knew it.

"Winding down we realised how fresh we still were. As a group it hit us right then. Winding down we realised there was still a lot in the tank, we were still fresh. We knew we'd stand up to anything then."

For Cyril the winning of an AllIreland was an inhalation of satisfaction rather then an explosion of joy. He talks contentedly about, the way the players and the management handled the whole business. Nobody went off their heads. Everybody handled it with dignity. That's important, says Cyril, that brings you back again, playing with such a fine group of lads.

He remembers just before New Year, the night of the medals presentation in the West County in" Ennis, getting the acknowledgement of his own people, the quiet joy of seeing a Munster medal in one hand and an All Ireland medal in the other.

Going around to schools was special too. Cyril Lyons went to his school in Toonagh where he learnt his hurling.

"The Principal and a couple of the teachers were still there. That was special to me. All the afternoons in school I would have spent dreaming of a day like that, all the afternoons you'd be learning your hurling. It was great to bring the cup back and to see the faces of the kids. It'll be different for them."

Winning made a difference far beyond the obvious, he feels.

"Our attitudes towards ourselves have changed. When you are beaten so often it gives you an impression of your own self worth. You have to win to re affirm your self worth. That's for lots of people not involved even. I'm a happier person now. Not looking to anybody else anymore. It's all come home now. It's up to ourselves what we want to achieve in the future."

This weekend he'll go out and find the hurley inside in the shed and dust it down. What he wants to achieve, well, that's up to him. For now he says his target is to play more then the 12 minutes of championship hurling which he was granted last year. He has no time for being the grand old man of the dressingroom.

"If lads are looking for somebody else to inspire them they are in trouble anyway. Look at the kids I teach in Ruan. I tell them this week it's too cold to be out playing hurling and they've long faces on them. Always in the past, if it was too cold they'd be telling you. Nobody needs inspiration this year. The love of the game is here."

The love of the game. The very phrase, when connected to hurling, brings Ger Loughnane to mind. Tonight he is quiet. These training sessions in Crusheen are Mike Mac's stage. Ger walks along the perimeter, hands tucked in gloves, head buried in a Harvard baseball cap. He's heard that Cork were out training over the Christmas period. He knows that his Clare team are the side to beat next summer. Motivation is welling up inside again.

It won't ever be the same though. He wants different satisfactions. Seeing the boys turn into better hurlers, watching them leave something for another generation, keeping Clare hurling strong. Different, less vivid pleasures.

"I'll never have the same appetite. I know that. Last year it was just fanatical. I look back and I laugh at myself. I saw myself on television at half time in the All Ireland. I couldn't believe how shook I looked. I remember I came back to school on the Tuesday and on Wednesday Tom Casey, who does the boilers, came in to me and said, 'Jeez, you'd want to be careful of yourself. You'll get a heart attack boy. I never saw a man looking as bad as you did on Sunday.' He was right. It was total obsession."

He knows he will never match that. He's happy he will never have to.

Over the Christmas he thought briefly about walking away, just as the Dublin football management had done. He understood their thinking.

"You've climbed the mountain. What are you going to do? Climb it again?"

But he stayed of course. The pull of the lodestone. Winning went far beyond sport in Clare. He met old people who wept, younger people who wished their parents could have lived to have seen the day, children who could scarcely comprehend. Winning has changed the way Clare feels about itself. There is still work to be done.

"There will be days when we are euphoric again, but the challenge is different now. It is to get the best out of ourselves for a sustained time. Eugene McGee once said of Kerry that they needed their fix every year. We need our fix. We need to know that we have done the best we can do."

And out of the darkness the boys come around in a great steaming pack, 28 of them, running in pairs, driving on through the January cold. The pair at the back break away and sprint to the front of the bunch.

"C'mon," roars Mike Mac. "We're doing it properly. We've always told ourselves. We do things properly. C'mon ladies."

Then there is just the wind and the sound of passing traffic.