TOM HUMPHRIEStalks to new Clare manager Ger O'Loughlin who hopes to lead the Banner back to the big time

FIRST YOU have to tell yourself not to overdo it on the whole “Sparrow” thing. The nickname, bestowed when he was about four years old by a benign primary school teacher, stuck to Ger O’Loughlin like a tattoo and will be with him, one assumes, on his tombstone. It’s a short story. He wanted to be off to school with his elder brother. He turned up. Stayed. So did the name.

So, when you hear he was living away from Clarecastle for a while and then recently moved back, you issue a mental injunction to yourself on sentences including the words “sparrow”, “flying” and “nest”. You broach the business of the Clare hurlers and their troubled past and how very few managers can write a happy ending in the Banner County and the words “Sparrow’s trap” perch in your brain. Shoo, shoo.

Enough. If Ger O’Loughlin is ever to escape the image of the Sparrow (and he has no real desire to, a lifetime in Clare hurling has taught him there are far worse things they could call you) it will be in this time when he steps into the ring in his home county.

Managing Clare is a magnetic sort of challenge. Of his comrades from the 90s, Cyril Lyons and Anthony Daly have already stepped up for a swing. In his playing days as a clever inside forward, using his brain in getting more out of himself then mere physique would allow, O’Loughlin never struck one as officer material but that was in a side bursting with leaders and cerebration.

Beyond the sidelines he has made his mark quickly. But Clare? When the job finally became disentangled from Mike Mac’s sturdy fingers there wasn’t quite a clamour for Ger O’Loughlin, more a quiet belief that at the time he might be the right man. And it is a tricky time. On the one side O’Loughlin has a bruised bunch of senior players. On the other, a county board not held up anywhere as a model of progressiveness or enlightenment and in the country beyond a populace rapt with expectation after last year’s glorious under-21 triumph.

“Couldn’t be easier,” they say. “A no-brainer. Take them and win the All-Ireland after next. That’s the future, Sparrow. That’s the way. Win that and we’ll resurrect the ‘Clare Shout’ and we’ll keep winning and all go mad together. Twas done before. Can be done again.”

He uses the word transition a lot when speaking about Clare hurling. A cautionary insertion. It may be a period of transition but there are reasons to be cheerful at last in Clare hurling.

Last year’s historic under-21 championship was a triumph, not just of fine coaching, but defiant, positive leadership bred into a team by John Minogue. It is rare to see a side from outside the big three place so much expectation upon themselves. Partly it may have been to do with their unfortunate experiences in Munster the year before but Clare demonstrated a hunger and a maturity last year which was truly exciting.

And there is Sparrow. The other living, breathing reason to be cheerful. He surrendered the stick in 1999 but didn’t rest long. A little coaching with Clarecastle and he slipped easily into the managerial side of things. Those who have worked with him cite his sense of order and clear communications skills as the points which make him a natural on the training field and in the dressingroom. He’s not conscious of it himself but enjoys wearing the tracksuit and putting back what he took from the game.

“It’s a natural progression really. You like to give something back when you retire and have a bit more time, see if we can get some future stars. I didn’t get involved with the juveniles. I went back with senior hurlers.”

More than that record is the aura he brings with him as a winner. Everywhere he has gone as player and beyond, O’Loughlin has enjoyed success. There was a minor with Clarecastle when they won the grade in 1981, when he played in goal in the first of his many years in the grade. There was a Harty Cup with St Flannan’s. There were county titles in Clarecastle, five of them scattered through the mid-80s and 90s. A Munster club title thrown in. Then the glory days under Loughnane.

Management continued the golden thread. A member of the Clarecastle backroom team in 2005, the last time “the Magpies” stole a championship and then onto Adare in Limerick where they won three county titles in-a-row under his leadership.

There is no smudgy area on his CV. No sense of struggle or unease.

In Clare, when it comes to explaining what happened after the briefly flaring Loughnane era, it is traditional to take a stick and beat the county board like a pinata. O’Loughlin offers a more thoughtful and realistic analysis.

“Look we are a small county. First of all we couldn’t expect to have the numbers to just keep producing winning teams. We will always have transitions . . . We got the best out of that team till 2003, 2004, nearly 10 years. What happened in between with regard to lads taking over and lads going over the top. I don’t know.”

O’Loughlin reaches for the big picture. “Maybe not having the academy in place that you need but a lot of other things were happening. We were in the middle of a change in the country which altered the mindset. Young lads from 2000 onwards, it was a different world, life was different. A small county like Clare needs every one of them.

“It was a loss and came back to haunt us but the amazing win last year might counter a lot of that. It’s the way Clare is. We aren’t going to be there every year.”

He knows the story. Grew up living it. Clarecastle was different then. A village rather than an extension of a big town. It was a small, simple place. You grew up with a hurley in your hand usually placed there by John Hanley, the national school teacher. After school, at lunchbreak during school etc your hurl was in your hand. You were out hurling all the time. That was part of being reared in Clarecastle. They didn’t win every year but they were knocking on the door most times.

The clubs boom goes back to that time. John Hanley in the school. Jack Connolly inside in Clarecastle giving a hand to every team.

“This is what is happening in Clonlara and Cratloe and Crusheen and these places now. The power has switched to east Clare. There are teachers in there doing that. We don’t have that set -up anymore in Clarecastle. We are a big place, a big club, we have a fine set-up but just keeping going is a big thing.

“O’Loughlin grew up on Madden’s Terrace with more hurling families crammed in to a short stretch of distinctive houses than O’Loughlin can recall off the top of his head.

“Scanlons, Dalys, Heaneys McMahons, ourselves and I’ll be killed, there’s others I’m leaving out. The game, it was part and parcel of life. You came home and you went out hurling in the terrace. We’d like to think we held the whole thing together.”

Clarecastle has changed though, mirroring that change which O’Loughlin has noticed on a broader scale, and impacting hurling the same way. Ten years of Tiger Times has swollen the population till the place reaches out its fingertips toward Ennis.

“From the top down, the administration in the club is a huge task. Our biggest problem is getting people involved again. People have so much else to do. You will lose a lot without the right structures. So we are going through a transition in the club. No longer dominant. It’s like that in Clarecastle and it’s like that for Clare.”

He comes among his people again though without a patented cure. He is no snake-oil salesman. He talks a lot about honesty and dedication and those two qualities will serve his administration well.

“It’s a tradition. I see great hope though with the under-21’s and some experienced lads. Over the next three or four years when they all come together I would like to think we will be there again.

“It typical Clare fashion we grasped that under-21 win with both hands though and suddenly we all saw the light at the end of the tunnel. It was fantastic for a county like us. It lifted the spirits of everybody. There are no guarantees though. Look at all the lads in Kilkenny and Cork with plenty of All-Ireland minor and under-21 medals who never played senior or never made it.

“In Clare we have to take the opportunity. Have to. We have to say it looks good. The way they won. It motivated us. We will not see the best from that panel for three to four years though. You need to be 22, 23 and 24 to compete with senior lads. Winning generates a huge amount of confidence. These lads have that which is great but we need to build, mix them in with lads in their mid-to -late 20s.”

“Over the next couple of years though we think real progress can be made. There is a bedding down time. You can’t introduce a group of them en bloc and say ‘go on now and do the same again lads’. A 20-year-old finds it hard to compete physically with fellas who have been senior for five or six years. So I hope there is patience. There is no magic wand. A huge amount of hard work, honesty and discipline is what this will take.”

Those things aren’t necessarily music to the ears of an impatient Clare hurling public. Any Clare player from the 90s risks losing the affection in which he is held when he takes up the challenge of managing a successive generation.

What made him take the job?

“Well first it was an honour to be asked when things didn’t work out for Mike Mac. I’m 43 years of age. If I didn’t consider it now, well in another three or four years I might not have the interest. It’s a transition. I wanted to be part of it going forward. I felt that the people I was dealing with would be honest with me and I’d be honest with them. The future looks bright. All we can do is make the progress. Silverware would be a bonus . . .”

Sparrow’s journey is internal and cerebral, as much about the joy of flight as the thrill of arriving.

“You see fellas improving in their speed and their thought and their skills. I like that. If fellas buy into it then it’s a thrill.

“It’s not the same as being young and fit and at your peak but I enjoy it and get a buzz and I love seeing progress and hoping that you are leading guys to be better. That’s all we try to do. That’s all we promise.”

No manifesto. No big promises. Some serenity and some thought. Might be just what the Banner needs.