*David Reidy in action for Éire Óg. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
RISING STANDARDS and greater accountability have driven Éire Óg to a second Clare SHC final appearance in four years.
At the beginning of July, David Reidy captained Éire Óg to win the Division 2 Hurling League, there was no celebrations with the cup which he accepted from clubman Paddy Smyth but it would be a completely different scenario were he to receive the Canon Hamilton on Sunday.
Returning to the county final after their 2022 loss “feels like a long time since we were last there but if you look at it overall in the last ten years we’ve been to ten quarter-finals and struggling to get over the line, we got to four semi-finals so we’re looking forward to the weekend and we’re going to enjoy it,” the captain outlined.
He told The Clare Echo, “It is a massive spot to be in but at the end of the day we have won nothing, if you lose at the weekend you might as well have been knocked out at the group stage like, we’ll be focusing on winning at the weekend”.
After five successive years of quarter-final losses, Éire Óg made it to the semi-finals in 2020. Reflecting on what led to their progress, Reidy said, “A bit of luck was one thing, if you look back to the previous management set-up we looked at it together as a club and what we way wanted to go and treat our culture and values, players themselves decided that we wanted to change our standards, the previous management let us dictate to a certain degree on what our standards were going to be, when we did that some lads that would have been playing senior for a number of years fell away, we had a bit of youth come back into the squad, we had junior players step up so it is not just one thing, it is a combination of everything to help the club as a whole to drive the senior hurling team on”.
Setting higher standards from their own performances in training is among the changes, he has observed. “In training it could be a bad night with wind and rain, the ball might not be going to your hand, who’s fault is that and who will take accountability in terms of that, it is back to basics really, we might hold up training and say ‘why aren’t we getting the ball to hand’, is it a lack of concentration and then we make sure for the next drill that we’re all set to drive it on. Things that might sound basic but they may not have been right seven or eight years ago”.
Basics must be perfected before any team can consider delving into a more tactical approach, the Clare forward flagged. “It’s like building a house, you have to have the foundations down first before you go building blocks, it is back to complete basics, the most basic thing is hitting the ball twenty yards to a fella’s hand, if you cannot do that consistently then why are you going into tactics. If you look at the Kilmaley game, skill execution wasn’t there but what we did have was workrate, tackling, harrying, hooks and blocks, they are all things that a lot of teams take for granted, if you don’t provide them on any day you will be in trouble”.
Though they have been consistently making the knockout stages for the last decade, Éire Óg will contest only their third final in twenty five years. “I’ve been around long enough, I’ve put in the hard yards and there a lot of lads in their mid thirties who have been on the senior panel since they were eighteen and they know nobody deserves to get to a semi-final or a final, this will be our second time in the final, we did it once in 2022 but we didn’t get over the line, we knew starting back in 2023 that every single club was back to a clean slate, you can pick out eight or nine teams that are very close because there is no real favourite and that is the beauty of the Clare championship that on any given year any team can triumph, if you look at this year none of the four semi-finalists were in the semi-final the year before which is massive and just shows the competitiveness of the Clare championship”.
Part of the victorious Éire Óg Clare SFC winning side of 2021, he doesn’t view Sunday as the chance to add to the collection. “I don’t think about it like that to be honest. It’s like two different sports, it’s like playing soccer and football, at the start of the year I was concentrating fully on hurling and that will be no different coming into Sunday”.
Similarly, he said the hurlers haven’t been drawing links with the success of the footballers who followed the 2021 win with titles in 2022 and 2024. “I don’t think we compare, it is two different squads, two different set-ups even though we have a crossover, at the start of the year we set our own goals in our hurling group, we don’t compare to other teams either in-house in the club or to other teams in the county, we’ve our own goals which we will try reach on Sunday”.
Clare’s All-Ireland defence did not go to plan in 2025 when the year finished with just one championship win. Reidy’s showings were one of the big pluses where he was consistently one of the county’s best players this season. “I think the biggest thing was to stay injury free, I had a full year of no injuries and credit is due to Lukasz (Kirszenstein) our S&C with Clare, he had me in good form, good fitness, I put the work in for the pre-season and that drove me on for the year and gave me a good foundation. Personally, games fell my way, I was able to get on ball and get scores, it goes back to the basics of working hard and getting tackles in”.
Part of the Clare senior panel since 2014, the past eleven years have gone by for him in the blink of an eye. “That is the one thing you will say to any of the young lads, there’s an opportunity on Sunday that doesn’t come around every day, I’ve played in one All-Ireland final with Clare in a thirteen year period, you blink and it is gone, we’re playing a county final on Sunday, we will embrace that, we will enjoy it and have fun out there as well as all the serious stuff because it might not come around again”.
Following Clare’s run, he returned to Éire Óg and there has been less pressure on his shoulders so far as scoring is concerned with Danny Russell on the frees while Marco Cleary and Darren Moroney have been clocking up big tallies. “It is important if you look at our team compared to last year, we’ve an extra bit of youth which has given a new injection of life, if you look at it we’ve seventeen and eighteen year olds, we’ve thirty four year olds and everything in between. Any day you go out trying to compete at the highest level there is pressure on you, it is about how you handle the pressure, we put pressure on ourselves to perform, again some days it doesn’t work but it is how you react to that. Coming into Sunday, it will be no different, we’ll be putting pressure on ourselves as individuals and as a collective, it is about whatever teams handles that the best”.
New additions to the panel have reminded him of his younger years. “I’m still young at heart, when you see the injection of youth and you have lads doing their Leaving Cert and looking at what points they’re going to get and where they think about going to college, you go back to thinking where was I staying when I was in Galway or Limerick with accommodation so you start comparing and talking about the nightclubs but the nightclubs that I was in are non-existent in Galway anymore so it adds a bit of craic which is very important too”.
Lining out against him on Sunday will be a familiar face, Peter Duggan, with whom he is very close. “Once that ball is thrown in there’s no friends, I’ve grown up with Peter, we are the same age and have been on the Clare panel twelve years together, he’ll be saying the same thing, once the ball is thrown in there’s no friends until the sixty fourth minute or whenever the final whistle is blown and we’ll go and shake each other’s hands, we’ll probably have a pint together but once the ball is thrown in between the white lines there’s no friendships,” he explained.
Sporting a red and white tracksuit top with no crest, it could be argued that he is still supporting Newmarket Celtic as much as Éire Óg in his choice of clothing. “I played for a number of years with Newmarket Celtic and managed to play for a couple of years when I was in with the Clare set-up, the way the body is now when hurling is finished before you go back in with Clare you need a break, unfortunately there’s no more soccer,” he recalled.
A medical sales rep with Glencar, the job brings with it a lot of driving which he uses to switch off from hurling. “I sell seats and mobility equipment for children with disabilities in Munster and Connacht, I’m on the road four and a half days a week, I go as far as Belmullet and Sligo down to West Cork and Waterford so there’s plenty of driving in it, I think my best friend is Joe Molloy on the Indo Sport Podcast, it is everything but hurling that I listen to, I’d say I’ve every podcast listened to except any of the hurling ones, it is a way to switch off more than anything between that, phone calls and work calls it passes the day driving”.
Time spent in the car does mean greater attention is placed on his recovery. “Especially on the longer days, you’re stopping halfway and stretching your hips or glutes, work is work and you have to work, I enjoy it is the big thing, if you weren’t enjoying it then that can play tricks on your mind in terms of how bad your body is but when you are enjoying it then it makes everything easier, recovery is as important as anything especially when you’re gone that bit older and you’ve a few more years under the belt than when you’re 21 or 22”.
