*Dermot Coughlan. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
IT’S championship week and Dermot Coughlan is back at the helm of a Clare football team.
He called time on his six year term with the Clare minor footballers following the conclusion of their 2024 campaign, contesting the 2020 provincial final and three semi-finals during his tenure.
Coughlan was the first-choice of the top brass of Clare GAA when they decided not to give Maurice Walsh a second season as U20 manager. During his year away from county affairs, he was over Kilrush Shamrocks and led them to Garry Cup glory but they exited the Clare IFC at the quarter-final stage to Cooraclare. He has previously led Clondegad, Kilmihil and the Shams to success in the Clare IFC.
Having managed many of the players at minor level, Dermot is hoping to guide their transition to the U20 grade. “I had taken a year out but when the County Board came to me I was surprised because I didn’t think the position would come up but when it did the one thing that enticed me was that they had said I had a fair knowledge of the players from being with the Clare minors for six years, obviously you’d only be with the same group for at most two to three years but they said the knowledge I had of the players would be good to bridge the gap from minor to U20, I felt that was the single biggest reason why I got involved”.
In November, he set out his stall with the panel of players and he’s been pleased with their preparation. “It’s been good, I keep telling lads because we haven’t had a big drop off, we’ve an awful young team this year, we’ve only four of the team which started in New Inn against Tipperary last April. From the minors I was involved with, I’ve brought most of them onto the squad and most of them will be playing on Saturday evening. n truth we’re probably a bit young and it is a bit of a building job over the next two to three years, I’m hoping that in two years time we’ll see the fruits of it but we’ll be blooding a lot of them guys this year”.
Attitude is the most impressive trait of the U20 squad, Dermot maintained. “I couldn’t say enough about them from my time at minor level with them. I don’t be ringing up these lads to know why they aren’t coming training, they have given it everything, some of them are seventeen and eighteen, we’ve some guys who were minor last year, it won’t be for want of effort on Saturday”.
There’s not as many survivors from last year’s U20s squad as there could have been for Clare. Captain Daire Culligan, Evan Cahill, Michael Kelly, Conor Hill, Seán Fennell, Darragh Townsend and Diarmuid McMahon are among those who received championship minutes under Maurice Walsh and are part of Coughlan’s squad. “For your first year involved you’d like to hit the ground running with a strong team on the age which won’t happen for us until two or three years time but I’ve no issue with that because that is the hand we’ve been dealt with, we’re going out with a young team and we’ve an awful lot of work done, we’ve a lot of challenge games and we’ll be expecting the best from those lads on Saturday”.
He is confident Clare can match their Munster counterparts. “The years I was involved I thought we were always competitive, we might not have always got the result but we had some great years against the Corks, Kerrys and Tipperarys, the Daryl Darcy might be a lesser competition between the four counties but all you can do is try be the best of the four and try progress after that”.
Munster will be treated as two separate competitions, he outlined. “It is phase one and phase two. The aim has to be to get out of phase one and try be competitive after that, we can only focus on the here and the now, that is Tipperary on Saturday and build from there”.
Saturday sees Clare welcome Tipperary to West Clare in their first of three outings in as many weekends before heading to Lemybrien (March 21st) to face Waterford and Mountcollins (March 28th) to meet Limerick. Playing three weeks on the trot “is a good thing and a bad thing,” Dermot felt. “If you don’t get injuries and you have momentum built up, if you win your first game it is a brilliant thing because you’re out again the following week with a bounce but if you pick up the few knocks and have a defeat you need an extra bit of time on the training field to try get the momentum going again”.
Throwing an extra challenge into the mix has been the amount of schools fixtures taking place. Dermot unlike his hurling counterpart Terence Fahy hasn’t restricted any player from representing their school, they lost centre back Conor Hill to a shoulder injury sustained in action for St Flannan’s College while this Saturday they will be without James Rafferty who forms part of the Rice College side vying for All-Ireland glory. “You’re trying to get a lot of these games played within the Clare schools before Christmas, you’ve some control there and come January you’re telling them we need to see a lot of these guys and see them in challenge games during the week. When they come out of Munster, it is out of your control. James Rafferty is on the panel and is playing an All-Ireland final on Saturday, there has to be some give and take, these lads are with their schools for five years and you’d be expecting them to play with their school, you’d love to have them playing but when you hit All-Ireland semi-finals with the schools it is into February or March which is inter-county time for us,” Dermot explained.
A Munster SFC winner in 1992, Dermot said Clare are targeting picking up a home win in their first outing. “You’d be hoping to win your home games and try get off to a good start, we’ve a young squad this year and it’s great to have our first game at home so we can try get a bit of a bounce. We’ve two away games this year so the whole idea is to try get off to a good a start as we can, that is what we’re looking to do on Saturday”.
Home support could be greater for Clare’s U20s but for the fact that games in the Cusack Cup, Garry Cup and other divisions are taking place across the weekend. “The unfortunate side is that there is a round of club games but they are on either side of it, either early or late in the evening. West Clare has always come out in force for underage no matter if it is minor or U20, we’d be hoping for the same thing”.
Challenge matches have been a valuable exercise in strengthening their panel, the Mullagh man noted. “We’ve thirty odd, we’ve used every player and we’ve given every player decent game time, you can’t have a fella on the panel if you will sit him on the bench week in week out, the plus side is missing guys through injuries allowed us to use other players so if we have to go to the bench on Saturday at least we will have lads tried out and we will know what we have. We’ve been able to use the panel over those games a little bit more”.
Joined on his management team by coach Eoin Curtin, selectors TJ Carey, Dermot Mahoney and goalkeeper coach Peter O’Dwyer, Dermot and his set-up will be availing of Clubber to study both Waterford and Limerick following their first round clash. His management also includes, S&C coach Jack Boddy, Murt Crowley (medical), Cathy Kelleher (nutritionist) with Brian Considine and Cathal Whelan responsible for stats. “All the games are done by Clubber, we’ll be sitting down on Sunday evening and looking at Waterford and Limerick but they are miles away from our thinking at the minute because we have to put our focus on Tipperary and our attention in the short turover for Lemybrien will be Waterford for the following week, that is how we have to operate and it is why we are in the job”.
