*Pearse Lillis. Photograph: James Downes.
PEARSE LILLIS’ return to Cooraclare was akin to that of the prodigal son and his arrival back to West Clare has helped the Milesians advance to a first Clare IFC final in three years.
A member of the Clare senior football side for seven years, Pearse was among the exits when Colm Collins’ tenure came to an end following the 2023 season. Lillis swapped his residence in South Cooraclare for South America and New York as he got to sample a different style of living.
On returning to Cooraclare, he told The Clare Echo, “I’ve found it good, it is nice to come back to a bit of a routine, it was a good time to move home because it was the start of summer, I’m sure if I moved home at the start of February it would be a bit more depressing than coming home when we had sunshine in West Clare and getting to swim every day, living at home is nice too and having a bit of structure around it”.
During his year and a half living in New York City, he played inter-county football with them in 2024 alongside former Clare footballer Cian O’Dea. The remainder of his time away saw him spend six months in South America, “I’ve seen a good chunk of one half of the world anyway,” he observed. A maths and PE teacher, he has been subbing in Ennistymon Community School since his return.
Occasionally but not religiously he kept updated on what was going on with Cooraclare football, “I was and I wasn’t. When you’re that far away you will look up the results of the games you want and knockout games, you’d be supporting them from afar but obviously you are living your own life”. He added, “I played a lot of football and hurling with New York for a year, I trained properly for that and I played with a club, obviously it is not as serious as here but you still got to play a lot, you’d miss the training and build-up to games, in New York no one is asking you about the game at the weekend whereas here it is all people ask about”.
He has been impressed by the ability of his teammates, the majority of whom he never played with before. “A lot of them I would have only met when I was doing camps in Cooraclare when they were U10s, I only played with four or five of the team and that was only over a two year spell so that shows the turnover we have. They are strong, there is a good minor team there and they have done well at underage, we have good numbers at underage and a lot of them played A football up along, they have a lot of youth and pace, I’m impressed with the way they are training”.
Ten years ago, Cooraclare were preparing for a senior final against St Joseph’s Miltown and Pearse was one of the youngest members of their team. A decade on, they are in an intermediate decider and he is now the oldest on the starting fifteen. “Yeah definitely you would feel the age, even on the team I’d be the oldest by a few years, I’m 28, one or two are 24, Brian is 22 and the rest are U21, I know I’m not old in life but you feel your age when you’re listening to some of their conversations about Leaving Cert and the other stuff. It has come full circle, they are the core group of the team whereas I just feel sometimes we are trying to help them out, they have the group of friends of ten or eleven that are all together and all good players, we’re just trying to help them as much as we can, it is different but we’re all going towards the same thing of trying to win the game”.
Little did he think when he started a then senior career that Cooraclare would spend four seasons at intermediate. “The senior going down to twelve teams has made it harder to stay up and with the natural progression of our club it was going that way. The first three years I had it was a semi-final, final and semi-final at senior so I obviously thought this was the way it goes but that obviously is not the way it works out, a lot of that team has moved on, we’re starting fresh again and we’re trying to rebuild and get back up to senior. The last year I played for the club was three years ago, we were just down, again it was a completely different team to what we have now but we got to the final and had a strong side but we just didn’t get over the line, when you just come down from senior that is the year to get back up”.
Anticipation for the final is evident in the parish, Lillis noted. “The evenings are getting shorter so the longer you can go on with the club it does shorten the winter, if you are knocked out in the group stages you are done in September so we’re enjoying it and we’re still meeting our friends every few days a week”.
Martin Daly has come in as manager during Pearse’s time away and the Lissycasey man is in the third year of his tenure. “I remember him for the backheel point which is what most people probably remember him for,” the twenty eight year old recalled of Daly’s football career. “He is good. He’s put a few years down, he is not just coming into the club and leaving again after a year when we didn’t make the final or semi-final so he has started the rebuild project, some of the messages he has been saying are starting to come through to the team, it does take a few years especially with a young team when you’re trying to mould the players and show them how to play adult football”.
At the beginning of the championship, Cooraclare were not considered contenders for honours is the honest assessment from the UL graduate but he has noticed a growth as their campaign has progressed. “We started to build since the second game, we lost to Corofin and we started to build from there, we’ve got to know ourselves and even for myself I’ve got back into the groove with football, I was very rusty at the start because I hadn’t played too much and you’re building then so it is a good time to be coming towards your peak”.
Adapting back to football was as challenging as hurling, he admitted. “They are both difficult in different ways, obviously hurling is not my first sport so it could have been tough but we had a more experienced team over there whereas here I’m more in the middle of the pitch so they were both the same”.
Ballyea’s semi-final exit in the hurling has sharpened his football focus. “It is good to be able to concentrate on Cooraclare for two weeks, when you have championship every week you’re not really training too hard because you are always in championship week, it is nice to concentrate on Cooraclare”.
Beating Kilrush Shamrocks was important for the younger players to taste a statement win, he felt. “It is a local derby too so you’re always going to be more up for it or definitely up for it, it was a good win, it was great for the young wins to experience a statement win, something to cling onto and know we are going in the right direction, I don’t think they had experienced a big win like that in the last year or two”.
These same players are now driving the charge for Cooraclare, Pearse maintained. “We won Minor B, Minor A and U21A from my age group but all of that team is not playing anymore with Cooraclare, that is life in a rural club you can’t expect all the lads to be here in their twenties, I’ve good memories from it, we had a strong team, it has come full circle from even 2015 when most of us where in the senior team and we were driving it then, now it is the young lads driving this for us”.
