*Kevin Hehir.
KEVIN HEHIR has the distinction of becoming the first Inagh/Kilnamona to captain and manage the club to glory in the U21A hurling championship.
On Sunday, his charges produced a fine comeback, scoring five of the last six points to defeat Éire Óg by the smallest of margins and win the U21A championship for the first time since 2018.
Managing the side was Kevin Hehir, a former Clare U21 midfielder who when he hasn’t been dealing with injuries remains one of the most consistent members of the club’s senior hurling team.
In March 2016, he captained Inagh/Kilnamona to win the U21A title, beating Feakle/Killanena 2-11 0-15. He received the trophy from then Clare GAA Chairman, Joe Cooney. Cooney has gone on to become a TD while Hehir has assumedly been building a strong managerial CV.
When Inamona last won the championship in 2018, he was a selector while his first year as manager has resulted in the Combo reclaiming the U21 crown. “We met at the start of the year and it was always our plan to go win the competition, that was our goal and when you achieve your goal it is always very satisfying,” he outlined. “It is brilliant for all the lads, it is great for them”.
After falling five points down in the opening seven minutes, Hehir pointed to the significance of their comeback considering the club was losing in similar scenarios over recent years. “Over the last couple of months and years in Inagh/Kilnamona we’ve had a couple of losses in close games that were hoping to close out, winning is a habit and losing is a habit so it is nice to stem the tide and get back winning those close games which we had done previously maybe seven or eight years ago and maybe we had lost recently, it is nice to win a game like that instead of losing them all the time”.
An engineer with John Sisk & Sons, Kevin was full of praise for their opponents, Éire Óg and is adamant the reigning senior champions will remain a strong force in Clare hurling. “That Éire Óg team are absolutely unbelievable, we knew at the start of the year that we had a strong team but the level of those Éire Óg lads is frightening. I was chatting to Gino (Niall O’Connor) afterwards, he said they have thirteen lads underage again next year, any senior team that will be meeting them over the next couple of years will be meeting a frightening side because them younger lads out there were the driving force of their senior team. We were under no illusions what we were going to meet today, it ended out that was as we expected”.
Joined by Aisling Kearney, Flan Hegarty, Noel Hehir, Seán Mahoney and Brian Foudy on the management, Kevin said six of their panel is overage next year and pointed out midfielder Mark Callinan was ruled out of the final through injury.
On the comparisons between winning the U21A in March at the start of the hurling year in 2016 and 2018 compared with their December success of 2025, he said, “It is a nice note to end on but it is a great competition, I hope they can look into it and maybe with the split season it isn’t possible but try fit it in at a different stage of the year because it is crammed in at the end of the year and it is not easy when you are scrambling for pitches and looking for challenge games but every team faces that adversity, it is trying to come through”.
