Online Club Football Championship coverage brought to you by the Shannon Springs Hotel—home of The Old Lodge Gastropub.
*Ikem Ugwueru. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
SETTING OUT to go where no Éire Óg team has gone on in over 100 years, the quest to win three Clare senior football titles in a row kicks off for the champions this weekend.
Back then they were Ennis Dalcassians when they claimed successive titles in 1909, 1910 and 1911. Now they are Éire Óg and remain the leading football force in the county.
Nobody in Clare has lifted the Jack Daly for three years on the trot since the famed Kilrush Shamrocks team of the 1970s, they were so good they have had a book published in their honour this year by Chris Dixon O’Mara.
With four titles already since 2021, this Éire Óg crop have proved their worth but three on the bounce would be special.
Such talk hasn’t been the topic of conversation in their dressing room, manager Shane Daniels pointed out. “We haven’t looked at it (three-in-a-row). When you’ve so many teams that could get in the way and we have hurling to try get through, we’ve to get through the first round and the group which is very tough so we’ll take it game by game and try build some momentum”.
Daniels a winner of five Clare SFC medals tasted his first senior success as manager last season having succeeded Paul Madden in the hotseat. “It’s the same as last year for us but we’re not really thinking about targets on our back, we want to get ourselves right for the first game. We’re coming off a hurling week so we’re trying to assess lads, keep them as fresh as we can, we’re not thinking of targets but just trying to get out on the pitch and start with a win”.
Dominant in Clare last season, their winning margins throughout the championship were eighteen, ten, twenty, ten, seven and seven points en route to lifting the Jack Daly. Hopes were high for the Munster club but St Finbarr’s of Cork blitzed them 3-20 0-14 in November.
On the learnings from the provincial exit, Shane told The Clare Echo, “We’ve looked back and analysed it, we looked at things we did well, we had periods where we did okay, the first fifteen minutes were quite decent. We’ve tried to work on it on the training pitch but it doesn’t happen overnight, it is hard to apply all these things into practice when you don’t have your full panel available for the league and then leading into championship it is still a work in progress but we have something to work on so we’ll hope to get out of the group and get even more time to keep working”.
First up is the experienced Cratloe, the last team other than Éire Óg to lift the Jack Daly in Clare but who they comprehensively defeated 2-23 0-11 last year. “Cratloe are always one of the top teams around, they are well coached and extremely well managed by Colm Collins. You know they will always bring something different, any game in Clare will be tough so we might as well start with a tough one against Cratloe”.
Possessing a star-studded line-up that includes Clare starters, Mark McInerney, Ronan Lanigan, Ikem Ugwueru, Manus Doherty and Gavin Murray, the Ennis side can also call on former county defenders Ciaran Russell, Dean Ryan and Aaron Fitzgerald.
Denting their cause is the absence of Colm Walsh O’Loghlen who recovers from an ACL injury sustained last October which ruled him out of the county final. Colm had been one of their star players last year. “Colm’s rehab is going okay, when he will get back fully on the pitch is still yet to be known. He is going up for an assessment again on Wednesday. He is just jogging on the pitch at the moment, the next step is picking it up with his runs, then twists and turns, he will have to follow a return to play protocol so we’d be looking at the latter stages of the championship to have him back if we’re still in it”. Also sidelined is Gavin Cooney who picked up an achilles injury in their Cusack Cup clash with Ennistymon.
For the second year running, Éire Óg find themselves in the seeded group where three of the four teams are guaranteed a quarter-final spot. Despite the clear safety net, Daniels insisted there was no extra advantage from their placing. “With the seeded group you want to finish top, you have to hope to get through, I don’t see any advantage of being in it, we still have to aim to get out of the group in top spot and if not there then second”.
Part of Paul Madden’s county management for a disappointing first campaign, Shane has managed to combine Clare and club commitments. “It has been different from what I was used to, it seems to have run smoothly, we’ve a fairly good backroom team with Éire Óg so if I missed a session they were well able to handle it. We seem to have a longer run-in to the championship than previous years, we’ve been there for five or six weeks solely now and it has been fine, we’d have wanted to go further and have a longer year with Clare but it wasn’t to be”.
Clare’s premature exit has also meant Éire Óg have had access to their county footballers earlier than normal. “We’ve had them a longer period but we had injuries with a few of them which hampered preparations, we wanted them to take holidays and take a break because it can be a long year, hopefully they are coming back in at the right time and a bit fresher. We don’t have to worry about fitness for guys training all year, we just want to see them fresh, that’s the plan we have gone with and we’ll have to wait and see how it has worked out”.
Éire Óg Factfile
Management: Shane Daniels (manager), Alan Malone (selector), David Russell (selector), Luke Moore (selector), Seanie Buckley (coach), Victor O’Riordan (S&C).
Captain: Aaron Fitzgerald
Key Player: Mark McInerney
One to watch: Danny Lyne
Fresh blood: David Loftus, Danny Lyne, Niall Doyle, Odhran O’Farrell, Bernard Power (transferred),
Departures Gate: Niall McMahon (regraded), Philip Talty (transferred)
Treatment table: Colm Walsh O’Loghlen (ACL), Gavin Cooney (achilles)
Titles won: 22 (1890, 1897, 1899, 1904, 1907, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1914, 1929 (as Ennis Dalcassians), 1947, 1948, 1952, 1954, 1994 as Ennis Faughs, 2000, 2006, 2021, 2022, 2024, 2025)
Last season’s run: County champions for second year in a row.
Schedule of games:
Round 1 vs Cratloe on Saturday August 1st at 18:00 in Zimmer Biomet Páirc Chíosóg, Ennis
Round 2 vs Doonbeg on Saturday August 15th at 15:00 in Páirc na Muintire, Lissycasey
Round 3 vs St Joseph’s Miltown on Saturday August 29th at 15:00 in St Michael’s Park, Kilmihil
Championship power ranking (1=weak/unlikely winners, 10=strong contenders): 9
