Dazzling Clarinbridge are the best team in the land

Date Published: 22-Mar-2011

THERE were only 27 minutes gone in the All-Ireland Club hurling final at Croke Park last Thursday, but the situation was already grim for Clarinbridge. Trailing by 0-9 to 0-4 and with opponents O’Loughlin Gaels dictating the trend of the exchanges, the Galway champions badly needed to get some foothold on the match before it was too late. Incredibly, by half-time, they had done much more than just that – they managed to retire on level terms.

It represented some turnaround in the space of little more than six minutes and though the concluding action of the opening-half was out of quilter with what had gone before, Clarinbridge had not only resurrected their prospects of winning an historic All-Ireland title but, at the same time, had seriously deflated their Kilkenny rivals who for all their dominance were back to square one at the interval.

O’Loughlin Gaels had to start all over again and the mood in their dressing room during half-time couldn’t have been positive – all that hurling and still only drawing the match. Their collective spirit had taken a hit and you almost see the energy and confidence draining from them soon after the resumption. Untypically of a modern-day Kilkenny outfit, they faded tamely away and could only manage two pointed frees for their troubles in the second-half.

In contrast, the Clarinbridge players had returned to the battleground with a spring in their step. From five points down, their defence under pressure and the forwards living off scraps, they were right back in the contest and, to the Galway champions’ credit, the men in maroon didn’t let the opportunity pass them by in the second-half as they hurled O’Loughlins off the park in becoming the sixth club from the county to lift the Tommy Moore Cup.

Sure, they had ridden their luck along the way, but the ’Bridge made the most of the odd break here and there to eke out the necessary improvement from being lucky to emerge from their group in Galway to being crowned the best club team in the land in the space of a few months. That’s some achievement by any standards for a club whose combination hurling has always been pleasing on the eye.

Similar to the situation in that epic All-Ireland semi-final against De La Salle, Clarinbridge were also off the pace and struggling badly in the opening quarter at Croke Park. With O’Loughlins’ Mark Bergin causing serious damage on the forty from where he landed four quality points from play in the opening 17 minutes, the Leinster title holders were by far the more convincing outfit with Daniel Loughnane and Alan Geoghegan also paying their way up front.

Clarinbridge were being largely restricted to sporadic attacks and though those forays helped yield points from the lively Eoin Forde, Mark Kerins, Paul Coen and raiding wing back Jamie Cannon in the opening 26 minutes, they had been playing catch up for much of the first-half and were coming off second best in most of the key duels around the field. Approaching the break, however, the game underwent a dramatic transformation.

After Alan Kerins, already benefitting from his switch out the field, and Forde had hit the target, Clarinbridge struck for the most timely goal possible as Mark Kerins, now at full forward, threaded a close range ground stroke to the corner of the O’Loughlins’ net in injury time. Kerins then had a rasping drive from his penalty effort deflected over the bar and, suddenly, the ‘Bridge were level.

While the conclusion to the opening-half clearly knocked the heart of the Kilkenny champions, by the same token it liberated Clarinbridge from the pressures of big-day hurling. They re-emerged for the second-half with a new-found belief and assurance as they proceeded to produce a magnificent 30 minutes of textbook play which left O’Loughlins chasing shadows. It was mostly one-way traffic as Micheal Donoghue’s charges outscored their demoralised opponents by 1-11 by 0-2.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.