Tulla keeping dream alive in Munster

Munster Club SHC Semi-finals:The Clare champions are in bonus territory but they're giving their all, writes Seán Moran.

One of the most iconic monuments in hurling is the Tommy Daly memorial outside Tulla. Daly, immortalised by the eponymous Bryan MacMahon lament, hurled for both Dublin and Clare and died young in a car crash in 1936.

This year for the first time since Daly himself was playing for the club, Tulla won the Clare championship. Tomorrow in Cusack Park they face Waterford's Ballyduff Upper in the AIB Munster club hurling semi-final.

"It was totally out of the blue," says club chair Declan Hogan. "The team had promised a lot but never produced. We knew the hurlers were there but reaching quarter-finals is as good as it's been for the club over the past 55 years.

"We've between 180 and 200 members. There's around 1500 in the parish of Tulla and that's building up. We've had a bit of an upsurge at underage, which means that we're doing well at a time when other east Clare clubs are amalgamating."

The county championship was dominated by outsiders this year. In the final Tulla beat Crusheen, who hadn't reached a final since 1974. The major powers of recent decades, Sixmilebridge, Clarecastle, St Joseph's and Wolfe Tones had exercised a vice-like grip on the county that was prised loose this season.

Tulla's team is built on a few minor teams between 1998 and 2002, one of which won the county in 2000.

History and tradition in the parish are strong. Tulla is the only club in Clare - and one of the few in the country - to have won county titles in all three centuries of the GAA's existence. In the 19th century the club was a power centre, winning four successive championships and going on to represent Clare in the All-Ireland final 118 years ago.

Team manager Jim McInerney toiled for years with both the club and county, just managing to hang on until the fabled 1995 season when he came on as a replacement in the Munster final. He identifies the first match of the championship, the round-robin against their eventual final rivals, as the day he noticed a change.

"The first game against Crusheen, who were classed as the strong team in our group. We drew but before we would have lost because we were behind and had a player sent off. For the first time we were beginning to play serious hurling.

"They decided themselves. Things were at rock bottom when they were thrown out of the championship last year."

Having failed to field a team last year Tulla had been expelled from the senior B championship in Clare.

According to McInerney the team's success has been built on a solid rearguard. "Our strength is in the backs. We've a mean defence. In the last four championship matches we've only conceded 1-34 and the goal came against Newmarket in the third minute of injury-time when we were 17 points up.

"I said we were good enough to win a championship, that we had done it at underage level and that Clarecastle, Sixmilebridge and St Joseph's weren't as strong as they had been."

Hogan says that the club has exerted huge pressure on opponents this season and successfully created a platform from which they have gone on to win matches.

"The game is tough and physical but we have the hurlers to match it. I know from talking to people from Newmarket and Clarecastle that they were expecting the intensity but still weren't able to counteract it."

Traditionally new or first-time winners have a tendency to approach the provincial championship with a lassez-faire mentality. Hogan says that this wasn't the case in the preparation for the first round against Lixnaw.

"After the county final, there was a few days celebration but it was back to training on the Wednesday. We said - with due respect to Lixnaw - did we want to become the first Clare club to lose down in Kerry."

But he accepts that Tulla are very much in bonus territory after an historic season. "More than twice the population of the parish turned up to welcome home the county championship trophy.

"So many people had been dreaming about this for so long - in fact you'd be giving out to yourself for even dreaming about it."