*Conor Shannon. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
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CLARE’S U20 hurlers have finished strong in all of their games and have packed a punch when it matters with the fingerprints of highly rated strength and conditioning coach Conor Shannon all over this.
Working as head performance and talent development lead with Clare GAA since February 2025, Conor’s appointment to succeed Rob Mulcahy has been an area where the county have consistently chosen the right candidate and the benefits are clear to see for teams from U14 to U20.
This is Conor’s third season involved with Terence Fahy’s U20 side and they are now preparing for an All-Ireland final. “Next Sunday they will have played in every game they could have possibly played in, it will be nice to get some silverware along the way but for them it is about the journey and get as many of them playing with their adult clubs, some of them will play for the Clare senior team and that is the point of the minors and U20s to get lots of lads playing at a high standard and see what comes out of it”.
With such a high load of championship games in a short space of time “four in twenty days,” it is testament to Conor’s input that the only injuries sustained in that timeframe were Joe Casey, James Cullinan and Ronan Keane “Touch wood we’ve got through the obstacle of four games in twenty days, I’d be grimacing for the first twenty minutes to ensure nobody pulls up but the games are so attritional, each year the physical outputs that lads are putting out year on year is phenomenal so to be able to do that four weeks on the bounce without much attrition is testament to them, they are super athletes, if I can keep as many of them on the field as I can then that is good”.
Avoiding knocks in this twenty day window is as a result of the foundations laid earlier in the year, the Lisdoonvarna native explained. “The bulk of the work is done at that point, this year has been a challenge, I had a concern coming into that we would be riddled with injuries but for the most part we’ve had ninety percent squad availability which is decent, they have such a high demand with school, college, club, they are playing something twelve months of the year so once you get in-season you want to hit your speed once a week, make sure they have done enough prior to the championship starting and then trying to maintain, mitigate and deload where we need, hopefully we’ve done that to a decent degree and we’ve got through the Munster championship so I’m happy with that”.
This approach requires a strong level of trust between Fahy, Shannon and the remainder of the management. “I’m sure the lads are pulling their hair out with me sometimes, I’ll make lads change things but the selling point is trying to have our best team on the field in a Munster or All-Ireland final so that is a good bargaining chip if I want to get my way, it requires honesty from the players too which is the beauty from having spent five or six nights a week with them for the last three years, they are more open when they do need to take a step back, it requires buy-in from all angles and we’ve got it right so far”.
GPS data will not dictate what players are substituted from the Clare U20 side, Conor flagged. “You might have only covered 4km in a game but you scored 1-7 so we wouldn’t take you off, we wouldn’t be deterred by data come matchday, the point of the data and the GPS is to inform what we do session by session week by week to ensure the lads are adequately prepared for what they are exposed to in a match, the demands of a middle eight player versus an inside forward or back are quite different, having a bank of match data from the last three years helps but making sure what we’re doing on the field is matched with what they need to do in a game and so that when they do come to a game it should be a little bit easier than what they have been exposed to in a week. We don’t use it for matchday decisions but more to get them to matchday”.
Not just a S&C coach, Conor is also a sports scientist and is one of the best in his field in the county. “The nature of the GAA is that you were all three hats (athletic development, strength and conditioning, sport scientist), in professional sport you might be siloed into being the S&C or the sport scientist but the reality is that in our own line of work you need to be able to do a bit of everything, you won’t be burdened with doing the same thing all the time which is enjoyable”. Ambitions to work in professional sport are not as strong as they once were, he admitted, “I probably had aspirations a couple of years back but that ship might have sailed at this point, never say never”. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Sport and Exercise Sciences and a Masters in Strength and Conditioning and worked as Head of Hurling Development with Laois GAA from October 2020 to May 2023, he then spent two years as Club and Education Coordinator with the Camogie Association where he launched a playing time charter to try address dropout and improve player retention.
Teams he has been involved with include the Clare intermediate ladies footballers under James Murrihy’s tenure when they reached the All-Ireland semi-final, the Limerick U20 footballers, Laois U20s and the Inagh/Kilnamona senior hurlers in 2024 and 2025 where they exited in the semi-finals via a penalty shootout and quarter-finals respectively. “This is my ninth year on the bounce with an U20 team between Laois, Limerick and Clare, lots of different roles but nothing beats winning with your own county, the Munster final was nice,” he reflected.
Time commitments are major, considering he has the full-time role on top of the Clare U20s and lining out with the St Breckans senior footballers. Unsurprisingly, burnout for himself is a worry. “There’s no doubt that the early six months of the year are frantic, I’m bordering it (burnout) at this point but it is worth the early mornings and long evenings when you have a high like we did in the Munster final. I’ve a great support system around me, Corina (fiancé), Ann-Marie Moran, Micheál Duffy and Deirdre Murphy before were very supportive, I’ve gone all in for six months and once that finishes we will take a step back and focus on St Breckans”.
Conor is continually researching latest trends and methods. “If you are not adapting you’re falling behind, what I do this year versus what I did the year before has probably changed, there is always new research or approaches coming out, it is probably an area I’d like to go into myself when my calendar frees up a bit, you try to be a little bit better every day you come here, it is working so far”.
There were big moments galore during Clare’s Munster final win over Tipperary, Ronan Kilroy’s diving block on the eighty second minute among them, it was so inspiring that it even prompted Conor to jump six foot into the air. “If there is a moment that sums up these lads it is probably that, we’re in the eighty second minute, Ronan has given every ounce of himself to make sure he gets that block and gets his county over the line, the way he has led the group having lost his mother has been exceptional, there is a great bond within the thirty eight of them, if there was a moment to sum up what they were about, it was probably that. When Clare people see that, it is in our DNA so we latch onto it”.
From his native Lisdoon and the surrounding areas of Doolin and Kilshanny, there is and has always been strong support for Clare hurling. “I grew up going to hurling games, we had a little bit of hurling back home, the Clare team is hugely supported back in North and West Clare, Dad would have always had us supporting the Clare hurlers growing up, even Pat Sweeney was down in the Gaelic Grounds and he is a staunch football man so it shows that we’re all Clare people and it is a Clare team, these guys with the character they’ve shown it doesn’t matter what corner of the county you are from you will support them”.
Strong finishes from Clare despite playing poor underlined that the bank of work overseen by Shannon had stood to them in good stead. “I was getting that after the early rounds but sport and injuries are so volatile that they can crop up at any point, I was trying to knock that back. To get through four games in a condensed window and finish them strongly is fulfilling for me but it is testament to the work the lads have done, they are supreme athletes and it is testament to our coaching team that they trust what we have laid out, it doesn’t matter what I advise if it is not heeded, that collaborative approach of having a really talented group of players, sometimes I think the talent of your group can over-egg how conditioned or unconditioned your players are, these players have both so it is great to get them some silverware”.
