*David Reidy. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
DAVID REIDY is gearing up for a thirteenth senior championship campaign with Clare and says the competition for places is as strong as it has ever been within the county side.
Reidy’s versatility, speed and skill makes him a viable option for both the half and full-forward lines in the county side but he is most likely to wear the number eleven jersey as the championship kicks off in earnest this Sunday in Cusack Park.
Opening their campaign in Ennis is a big plus considering the special championship atmospheres that have accompanied Clare in Cusack Park under Brian Lohan’s tutelage. Reidy is eagerly awaiting facing Waterford, “I’m looking forward to it first and foremost, we’ve the first round in Cusack Park with Waterford coming to town, it is going to be a massive occasion, I’m really looking forward to it, we’re in a really good position with the way the league started and how it finished, we took the league in two parts, the last couple of games have been championship intensity, Wexford came to Ennis and needed a result to get promoted so it was a real championship intense game, it is preparing us well for the first round in Munster”.
One of the big questions is how big the jump will be for Clare, having competed in Division 1B of the Allianz National Hurling League whereas all of their provincial opponents lined out in the top tier. “It is very hard to know, we won’t know until Sunday but you look at Waterford who finished the league not so well so will they be saying the same thing, you won’t know until Sunday. When you look at Division 1B of the league, yes we had games where we didn’t need to be at our best to win but when you look at the more competitive games and where they are coming, playing Wexford at the end who needed a result, playing a really good Dublin team who should have beat us the first day and playing that two weeks before championship is the best championship preparation that we could ask for,” David outlined.
With thirty seven players seeing action in the league for Clare, it has created a strong competition to get on the starting team. “It is massive at the moment,” he told The Clare Echo of the battle for places. “If you look at the profile of players used, you have your more experienced players and then you have the more youthful players coming in but they are not just coming in and being part of it, they are really pushing standards day in day out, they are pushing intensity in games and are tackling harder than ever before, they are a real focal point in a full team”.
:You have loads of young fellas coming in, you have Diarmuid Stritch, Jack O’Neill, Colm O’Meara, we have so many lads looking for places and they are all putting up their hand, that will only improve the team and that is what we are all there to do, we’re not there to be individual players, we’re there to be team players to improve Clare”.
Having joined the county senior panel in 2014, it has gone by in the blink of an eye that David is one of the more experienced members of the panel. “If you look back and try think of when you first joined the panel it feels like a year or two ago but it is most definitely not that. Your experience changes too and that improves so it is about helping a lad that might need a hand around the shoulder and someone that might need to be told something tactically, that is what I do naturally be it club or county it is something that club that comes natural to me”.
His ability to deal with big occasions is among the personal changes he has experienced over this time. “It changed a small bit in terms of preparation. When I was starting out in my inter-county career, I might have been nervous, there have been nerves here or there but you learn how to deal with them and put them at the back of your mind, you learn how to release them, it only comes with experience, you can’t do that overnight. Sport science is constantly changing and you’re progressing with that, if you look back at 2014 and 2015 and the way you prepared a week heading into a game it is completely from then to now, you have to adapt with that now”.
Collectively how preparation is managed stands out as something which has changed over his time with Clare. “The load management more than anything and how individualised it has got. When an individual player has hit certain numbers, they might be told to step out halfway or three quarters of the way through a session compared to before where everyone was doing everything, everyone is different, we all play in different positions and we all need to meet different demands, that is the biggest change in terms of sport science”.
Coming into 2026 after captaining Éire Óg to win a first Clare SHC title since 1990 and their run to the Munster semi-finals, the medical sales rep was given a longer break than normal. “I had a five or six week break, I was able to recharge the batteries and left the hurley out of my hand for the full length of that, when I came back it was full bull coming back and I was really ready to try make an impact coming back. The way I’ve been managed with the break and into the league campaign getting plenty of minutes and getting minutes individualised to myself on how many minutes per game I want to hit and what numbers in terms of running and sprint work, it was all individualised so the way I was managed was top class”.
This tailored programme meant it was agreed he would be taken off after hitting a certain amount of kilometres during his early league appearances. “More so than X amount of running than the minutes. I obviously didn’t hit that number early enough to get called off too early,” he quipped. “It needed to be that way with the way I had the long campaign, the way I was off for five or six weeks, you can’t just go straight into a full seventy minute game, you just end up picking up niggly injuries so it has to be that way. In 2013, it might not have been because it wasn’t so individualised”.
Approaching the eve of yet another championship run in saffron and blue, Reidy says the appetite remains as strong as ever. “If it wasn’t I wouldn’t be here, when the appetite goes you are wasting your time because you need to be at the top of your game to compete at this level”.
