The lack of hurling talk on this site........

Sickening to say the least

The Puke wrote:Sickening to say the least

Speak of the devil...

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Welcone back Puke, completely agree with you there.

Thomas Clarke wrote:

The Puke wrote:Sickening to say the least

Speak of the devil...

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

If you ever bad mouth my dog again then I am going to go through you for a short cut

The Puke wrote:

Thomas Clarke wrote:

The Puke wrote:Sickening to say the least

Speak of the devil...

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

If you ever bad mouth my dog again then I am going to go through you for a short cut

That would be your old friend Boxty. Coming from Tyrone, I've never even heard of a 'Lohan' from Clare.

Davy and the Puke receive message from Vet that "Lohan" has survived the pinemartin attack.

TC assuming TC is also his home club on dodgy ground with any canine references here

Thoughts on Cork and Dublin game there lad.

I'll be expecting a big blast in advance of Clare and Limerick out of you next Monday.

You near M M (not the pie factory) then.....I like a car a fellow is selling there. Have you transport?

Boxtyeater wrote:Thoughts on Cork and Dublin game there lad.

I'll be expecting a big blast in advance of Clare and Limerick out of you next Monday.

You near M M (not the pie factory) then.....I like a car a fellow is selling there. Have you transport?

I would like to see the Dubs win but i think Cork hold too many aces here. They performance against Kilkenny was far more clinical than dublin were in their two games against them. Cork probably are lacking real star quality but they are well drilled and of all 4 teams remaining their use of the ball and support play is by far the best, they lack a real goal threat but so too do the Dubs. It is pretty much a battle between Dublins physicality and Corks ability to use the ball, if Dublin can outmuscle them they have a chance, as their backs are plenty mobile and Cork's half backline will struggle to turn the tide if under pressure. But I think the 5 week lay off will have taken a lot of momentum out of Dublin, unlike their semi final appearance 2 years ago there is far more expectation on them now. While i don't think this is a great Cork team I do think that they are in a good position coming into this game and have tradition on their side, I expect them to shade it

A good exciting contest today. Hardly a "classic" or whatever Cyril and Gerlock gushed out.

The instant O'Dwyer got the 1st. yellow card (justified, given his abrasive style over the years) I knew he was unlikely to see it out. How a senior I/C player with his experience/reputation failed to realise the banana skin he was on is beyond me. His 2nd. yellow was marginally more justifiable but merited just the same.

The flake by Rushe was a straight red and the referee bottled it. This will cause Mr. Owens problems with the oveerseeing committee sadly, as those incidents apart he had a decent game.
Cork will be hard beat from here. They will have gained belief and spirit and JBM is certain to have them focussed for whoever emerges next Sunday.
They had the better hurlers and an innate ability to nick the points more handily from out the field.

Dublin will regret this lost opportunity. They hurled with great intensity, Keaney and Sutcliffe were excellent but are now around the 30 mark. By the time their youth scheme kicks in these warriors will have gone.

Roll on next week.

Boxtyeater wrote: Keaney and Sutcliffe were excellent but are now around the 30 mark. By the time their youth scheme kicks in these warriors will have gone.

Sutcliffe is 21

The Puke wrote:

Boxtyeater wrote: Keaney and Sutcliffe were excellent but are now around the 30 mark. By the time their youth scheme kicks in these warriors will have gone.

Sutcliffe is 21

True for you. Mixed him up with Dotsy.

Bullish about next week then. Not much between them.

The fact of the matter is that hurling will always be about speed and skill and in my opinion Clare have more hurlers in their side than Limerick. The Gaelic Grounds where Limerick have played their two championship games to date is a fairly tight pitch and there will be far more space for them to close down in Croke Park next Sunday.

Clare are very much on an upward curve, their hurling is quickening up every week and aerobically they are unbelievably fit and this certainly has helped make up for what they lack in bulk compared to Limerick. The fact that seniors like David Mcinerney, tony Kelly, Colm Galvan and Podge Collins absolueltly lorded it against Tipp last week in the 21s is also worth taking into account. Normally seniors who are playing 21s can look a bit weary disinterested at this time of the year in the 21s grade. The touch and attitude of these lads was spot on and all four look bang on form.

With a young/inexperienced side like Clare have you simply do not know what will happen as young/callow sides often have a habit of inconsistency until the experience has been aquired. The omens are good though, there has been very little between the two sides in tghe last two years and I don't see than changing. The addition of Conor Ryan to the Clare half backline certainly makes us a better balanced side as we lacked a bit of physicality down the middle of the side which he added v Galway

I hope for an enjoyable spectacle where Limerick hammer 7 shades of ***** out of Clare.

RMDrive wrote:I hope for an enjoyable spectacle where Limerick hammer 7 shades of ***** out of Clare.

What would you expect from a pig but a grunt

The Puke wrote:

RMDrive wrote:I hope for an enjoyable spectacle where Limerick hammer 7 shades of ***** out of Clare.

What would you expect from a pig but a grunt

I'd say you're an 8/10 on Boxty's "Badly shook" meter.

RMDrive wrote:

The Puke wrote:

RMDrive wrote:I hope for an enjoyable spectacle where Limerick hammer 7 shades of ***** out of Clare.

What would you expect from a pig but a grunt

I'd say you're an 8/10 on Boxty's "Badly shook" meter.

The Puke is coming across as a man "mildly rattled" and it's only Monday yet. In associated hurling/Clare matters, RTE's auxillary commentator, Tony Considine, comes across as an utter spoofer on radio.
He should stick to something he knows about (hill running) and possibly silage.

A rivalry that spans more than just the Shannon

Christy O'Connor – 16 August 2013

Early on Sunday morning, a bus will leave Daggers pub in Ardnacrusha, packed with people from Parteen.

It's a Clare bus heading to Croke Park that will be loaded with a fusion of Clare and Limerick jerseys. When Clare and Limerick meet, no soul in Parteen can ever deny their own heart.
Weeks like this are not a time for ambivalence or uncertainty. Allegiances are never hidden, always loudly declared.
Some houses around Parteen have Clare and Limerick flags hanging out the same windows, a metaphor for mixed marriages and the split personality that defines some households. Living in Clare and rearing Clare families is still never enough to dilute the thickness of blood pumping through Limerick hearts.
There are numerous interfaces stretching along the 20km border between Clare and Limerick but Parteen is at the heart of the frontline. The counties meet and intertwine in this pocket of south-east Clare, and what each county thinks of the other is always crystallised and magnified.
The relationship has always been harmonious and was never scented with sulphur or cordite, or laced with the naked hostility that defines other close-border rivalries.
Unlike other rivalries, there is no real direct connection with cross-border clubs, so the Clare-Limerick rivalry is largely confined to good-natured humour and exchanges from within.
"The banter is always great on weeks like this because everyone is good friends," says Paraic Conlon, Chairman of Parteen GAA club. "Fathers are going to the match in their Limerick jerseys with their sons wearing Clare jerseys."
Because of its proximity to the city, south-east Clare has always been intrinsically linked with Limerick. Six of the this year's Clare panel went to school in Ardscoil Ris alongside nine of the Limerick panel.
Smouldering
When Ardscoil won their first Dr Harty Cup title in 2010, current Clare senior Cathal McInerney captained a squad that included five Clare players.
That close connection between the two counties has always kept the Clare-Limerick rivalry smouldering, while the fire was constantly stoked by the high number of people crossing the border for work on either side.
Living right on the boundary though, inflated the pride people from south-east Clare always had in their Clare identity.
They have always cherished it. Sixteen years ago, Limerick Corporation first asked the Minister for the Environment to extend the Limerick city boundary into Clare. The Corporation requested over 4,000 acres in Clare, taking in Shannon Banks, Westbury, Parteen, Meelick, Clonlara and Gillogue.
The majority of the 3,000 people living in those areas were totally against the proposal, and a committee called 'Clare Against the Boundary Extension', which Conlon was a part of, fought the battle for well over a decade.
The clubs of Parteen, Meelick and Clonlara would have all been heavily affected by the move but Parteen stood to lose more than anyone. The vast majority of their parish was in the proposed new extension.
"The club effectively would have been wiped out," says Conlon. "Even our pitch would have been incorporated into Limerick."
In response to some of their initial questions, Limerick Corporation said that Parteen could continue to play in the Clare championship "if they liked". Therein lay the answer. "We would have been playing in the Clare championship," says Conlon.
"But as years went by, people from around the area would be regarding themselves as Limerick people. Then it probably would have come to a vote some day that we play in the Limerick championship. We would more than likely have had to sell our field and buy some place out in Ardnacrusha."
Some locals had already seen the effects of a previous extension. In 1950, Limerick's first cabinet minister Michael Keyes granted the city its only boundary extension, which saw Caherdavin incorporated into Limerick.
"Caherdavin was in Clare but in the space of a generation, the Clare link was almost completely gone," says Jim Gully, who was Chairman of 'Clare Against the Boundary Extension'. "And once that link goes, it never comes back.
"We were proud of who we were, and we weren't prepared to let it go. It had happened before. It wasn't going to happen again."
In Parteen, three years ago, around 2,000 people marched in protest against the proposed move, with every underage player in the club marching in their club colours.
The fear had hung over the whole area for almost a generation, but it was finally eradicated when a new government took over and Environment Minister Phil Hogan quashed the proposal.
Identity within the local clubs had always been important, and it was also heavily intertwined with their struggle to gain full identity within the Clare club culture. Parteen splits the border just over a mile from Thomond Park, home of Munster Rugby.
Almost completely cut off in a corner of south Clare between the canal leading into the Ardnacrusha Hydro-electricity plant and the river Shannon, Clonlara has similarly always been indelibly linked to Limerick.
"That was something we always had to live with," says Gully. "When we went up to hurl clubs around Ennis, you'd often get this attitude, 'Let's bate this crowd back to Limerick'.
"It was just part of it, but it steeled us even more because we always tried to have an answer for it."
An amalgamation of Cratloe, Clonlara, Killaloe and Parteen reached the 1972 county senior final under the banner of St Senan's but they were hammered by Newmarket.
The lack of profile and status those clubs had in the following decades stemmed from a lack of success and from only providing a drip-feed of players to county teams.
Jackie O'Gorman (Cratloe) and Colm Honan and Tom Crowe (Clonlara) won National League titles in 1977 and 1978 but both clubs only had sporadic representation on county teams until the current generation arrived and blew that convention to pieces. Both Cratloe and Clonlara now have a whopping 12 players – six each – on the senior panel.
Clonlara had five starters on the Clare U-21 team which won the 2009 All-Ireland title. Cratloe had four starters on last year's All-Ireland U-21 winning team. Gully managed Clonlara to their first senior championship in 89 years in 2008.
Clare senior selector Mike Deegan managed Cratloe to their first senior title in 2009.
Having such a high number of players on the senior panel now reflects how the power in Clare hurling has shifted from the big traditional clubs to the south-east. Clonlara and Cratloe are taking that reality in their stride, but it has boosted the overall self-assurance and outlook of all the local clubs.
"It has given massive confidence to all the clubs down here," says Conlon. "Ten years ago, we were only a junior club. Last year, we were beaten in the intermediate semi-final.
"We are putting in a massive effort this year and are quietly hopeful of winning intermediate. Going senior would bring more of our players in to the limelight. But being successful on the field of play would also really strengthen our identity with Clare."
On Sunday, south-east Clare will empty and head for Croke Park. They will all travel together; club-mates, friends, families. Not all will shout for the same team, but each soul will be loyal to their heritage. And true to their heart

I'm mildly confident that we'll be subjected to more hurling analyis than we are able to cope with over the coming days. Unlikely to see "first sightings" before Tuesday all the same....

All this despite bad news last week concerning Lohan, the dog that is. Apparently the vet has diagnosed a serious ailment and the one-eyed terrier may not see the Banner annex Liam McCarthy.
A fundraiser could be organised to help defray madical bills if we have the time....

Anyway, a mighty day for the Banner and forumite The Puke.

The Puke  

The Puke wrote:The fact of the matter is that hurling will always be about speed and skill and in my opinion Clare have more hurlers in their side than Limerick.

as usual I have been vindicated

Great day for Clare. Kelly was tremendous, Ryan impeccable, McInerney imperious. Puke ecstatic....

Boxtyeater wrote:
All this despite bad news last week concerning Lohan, the dog that is. Apparently the vet has diagnosed a serious ailment and the one-eyed terrier may not see the Banner annex Liam McCarthy.

Sad news breaking from Clonlara. It seems the famed Lohan has been called ashore..... 

Taken from Hurlers & Hounds magazine:

"The greatest €250 I ever spent. He was loved by all he came in contact with, as docile and friendly a dog as you could find and despite losing an eye it seemed to give him even more character. He could be a hoor for wandering off but would always return home after an hour or two with a regretful look in his eye knowing he did wrong."

It's tough but stay strong Puke. We're here for you.....

On the Line: Donal Óg Cusack on Hurling
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Just a few weeks ago I was sitting up in the Cooley Mountains wondering about the oddness of a world where you could spend a career being abused for your short puck-outs and then drive the length of the country to compete in a Poc Fada competition run over hill and mountain tracing in the footsteps of the warrior Setanta as he made his way to Co. Meath.
Dalo was devouring Seanie McGrath like a python eating a rabbit in a David Attenborough film. As poor Seánie's little bobtail disappeared down Dalo's gullet, Dalo waved a fist at the camera and a fist to the crowd.
A Clare fella came out of nowhere and sat down beside me. The usual old chat. Who's going to win the All Ireland?
I said what I thought. That with Kilkenny gone it was anybody's championship. He looked at me and said,
“You know of course who is our biggest problem. Your man.”
When you hear that from a Clare fella it can only be Davy Fitz they are talking about.
I said back, and I meant it, that I think Davy is a great asset. To Clare, the game and our Association. The GAA needs characters. Hurling needs characters. I love the way his team plays. He has a new system, a new style and it shows years of thought and imagination.
"Yeah but look at him on the line," said my friend. “The carry on. Compare him to ye’re man."
We will compare them. That's one of the reasons that makes this final so worth looking forward to. Cork played lovely hurling, especially in their semi-final. Clare play lovely hurling. Will somebody blink? Will somebody lose their nerve?
Jimmy Barry-Murphy must smile to himself at the irony of things. Here he is doing again what he did in 1999 but this time the opposition is more like the 1999 version of Cork than even Cork are. Precocious, with a lot of underage success behind them and probably afraid of nothing.
In 1999, September was bonus territory for us. It should be the same this year for Cork but the season has been so magical that the sense of expectation in Cork is massive. How Jimmy handles things and how Davy handles things for the next few weeks will be brilliant to watch.
Clare, like Cork, are ahead of their own development curve. The key to Clare's game is that it is fluid. It changes when it needs to. Podge Collins gets called away to perform some other task and another man has the intelligence to fill in. They are like that everywhere. Their style is like a river making its way through mountains. Fast and shallow when it needs to be, quiet and deep when necessary. It makes its way through the path that will get it to the sea.
Clare's style takes many forms and it is constantly changing. Not unlike their manager. Davy has mellowed into a quiet enough presence now, compared to the full harvest moon version who lit up the hurling world back in the 1990s. It had to be so. He has reined himself in and produced a team worth paying good money to watch.
If you judged books by their covers you wouldn't have thought that a graduate of the Loughnane school would have come up with something so subtle. I remember back in the early days when I joined the senior panel with Cork when we started playing the old team there was almost a sense of fear of Clare in our dressing room. They had such an aura about them. They hammered us a couple of times. We came away wondering would we ever match what they had.
A couple of years later in 1999, I remember a fella from Castlemartyr came up to me as I was coming out of training on the Thursday night. We were playing Clare on the Sunday. The Castlemartyr man asked me had I any tickets going. I hadn't and I commented to him that they were fierce hard to come by, that he may have left it late. He said to me, 'to be honest it isn't ye I want to go and see at all. I want to see Clare like.'
I thought to myself that maybe he should see how he'd get on looking for tickets above in Ennis if he loved them so much, but I could see his point. They were an awesome team. The most shy and retiring of their defence was Seánie McMahon and I rated him so highly that one of my prize possessions is the jersey he swapped with me after his last-ever Munster game.
We got over them in the end though on that Sunday. We did it through nerve and a lot of that nerve came, in fairness, from Mark Landers. Mark and me would have our differences down the years but he had carraigs on him that you could see from the moon. He had great confidence and didn't fear anybody and in the end that rubbed off on us.
He organised a video for us in 1999 of Anthony Daly. We were in Dundrum House, the usual hotel in Tipp, before the game when Landers stuck his movie on. ‘Dalo’ was devouring Seánie McGrath like a python eating a rabbit in a David Attenborough film. As poor Seánie's little bobtail disappeared down Dalo's gullet, Dalo waved a fist at the camera and a fist to the crowd.
That got to us. Dalo was on the way to matching Christy Ring’s record of captaining three All-Ireland winning teams. That got to us as well. That made it the day we stood up to Clare. From the parade to the final whistle we waged war on them.
And the strange thing which we realised afterwards was that when we stopped and thought about it, we almost expected to win it. Our sense of entitlement came back. We'd won two minor Munster titles and three U21 Munster titles. This was only a natural progression. It's not that black and white coming off underage success but it's not far off it either.
(It's dangerous to say this in these happy times for Cork but it would be a dangerous thing for us in Cork if this team's great success papered over the cracks we have at underage and colleges level. We've only to look around us at our neighbours in Munster to see what talents they are each growing on their underage allotments. Mushrooms maybe, but mushrooms won't stave away a famine. If Cork win on September 8, it would be dangerous for us to swallow any propaganda that this was part of some five-year plan).
Clare learned this. When the great, fearsome team of the 1990s went away they found they had nothing coming through to replace them. There wasn't a structure in place that took the skills of all the kids whose imaginations had been fired up in the glory years after 1995 and turned those skills into a team which would continue the legacy.
(It was almost too late by the time they got things right but they have them right now and the energy of Clare hurling is coming from places like Clonlara and Cratloe and Crusheen).
At the beginning and the end of it all back then for Clare was one Davy Fitz. He was a force of nature. Not a rainbow or a spring shower. Some kind of walking cyclone. We wouldn't have had a lot of time for each other. Playing with Munster was the only time we were thrown together. If Brendan Cummins of Tipp was the other goalie, myself and himself could rub along grand. If it was me and Davy, we snarled at each other like the two most dementedly competitive lunatics on the block. We'd have no interest in having a cup of tea and a chat together but I always knew where he was coming from.
I stood behind the goals in Páirc Uí Chaoimh in 1999 specifically to study himself and Cummins when Clare played Tipp. I got the All Star that year but I know that Davy Fitz deserved it. It was reversed I reckon in 2005 but in 1999, for that afternoon alone, he deserved the All Star.
Paul Shelley was full-forward for Tipp that afternoon. He could have been a hero. Should have been.
A couple of things stood out for me that day, however. Into a blinding sun, facing the charge of the light brigade, Davy could catch a ball underneath the crossbar. And he is not a big man. In golf they say you drive for show and you putt for dough. Goalies know what looks good and what is a real challenge. That's a real challenge. That is as tough as it gets in that position.
Shelley was through that day with a couple of minutes to go and Davy made a ferocious save, a brilliant save that kept them alive. Now you're a goalie in that atmosphere at the height of the game and your adrenalin goes mad when you make a save like that. But a minute or so later Clare got a penalty and Davy made his way up the field to take it. If he scored Clare got to live another day. If he didn't score they were out.
How could you calm yourself? But...
Just before the penalty, one of the Tipp corner backs got injured. I don't remember if it was Liam Sheedy or Donnacha Fahy; I think it was Sheedy though. Davy went to take the penalty. Davy's preferred and natural strike of the ball in that position would have been from right to left. At that moment, every sports shrink and every coach would tell you to fall back on muscle memory and do what you are most comfortable with. But Davy struck the ball low the other direction at the injured Sheedy. Goal.
Some people wouldn't give Davy the credit for that. I would but even if you don't, his performance topped by the moment of cold blood it took to score a penalty against Cummins was incredible. Maybe he's mad like they say but for me there's a method in there.
Ha! He was something else. Cork forwards used to talk of the abuse he'd give them. I remember in 2005 when we beat them he picked up the umpire's green flag and waved it at the Cork crowd. We'd won but he hadn't been beaten for a goal and he was defiant right to the end.
The challenge he has now isn't much different than the challenge he had in his playing days. All that madness and passion he had for the game, he had to control it and put his hand up under the crossbar and catch a dropping ball as he faced the blinding sun. He had to go the length of the field in the dying seconds and weigh up the weakest link in the lads on the line trying to save his penalty.
For the next few weeks he has to control the madness of Clare, the precociousness of his team, the expectations and the criticisms. He has the attention to detail to carry it off.
I used to take a look at Davy's hurleys. You can tell a lot from a fella’s hurleys, about how engaged his brain is with the game. You could see the attention to detail. Davy's hurleys were always perfectly gripped. Always good hurleys and he would often have two bits of band on the back of the bas. It doesn't matter whether those two strips of band made a difference or not. You could tell that this fella was thinking about the game night and day just by having them there looking for the edge.
This summer, referees have shipped a lot of criticism for high-profile mistakes in big games. There have been mistakes, human errors but what has gone unnoticed is that the way the game has been refereed has put the emphasis back on skill.
We were in danger of going in a direction of being left with a game that only allowed for players who were six feet two and fifteen stone to play it. Fellas with the resilience of rugby wing-forwards, who could bounce off the third man tackle, disarm the spare hand interference, drive through the neck high challenge and then think about getting rid of the ball.
We have evolved this summer into a game of fast movement which uses the spaces. It is a healthy response and one that thoughtful hurling people saw coming. Two of the more thoughtful teams have reached the September summit playing that way. Lads like Daniel Kearney and Podge Collins can light up the game in the same way the Joe Deanes and the Jamesie O Connors did in the past.
Across the ring in the red corner Davy Fitz faces another icon. Davy and Jimmy have brought their thoroughly modern teams along at just the right time. It's some jungle. It's some rumble. Two characters who can float like butterflies and sting like bees once they hold the nerve...

This is the latest of Dónal Óg Cusack's exclusive 'On The Line' hurling columns in 2013, which will feature on GAA.ie throughout the summer. The opinions expressed in this column are personal and are not necessarily those of the Association.