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*Éire Óg’s Darren Moroney. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
FOR THE FIRST time in almost four decades, Éire Óg set out their campaign in the Clare SHC as reigning champions and with that comes a target on the back of the Townies.
Talk of back to back titles won’t be entertained at this stage of the season by the Townies. After winning just one game in the Clare Cup, the reigning county champions suffered relegation from the league’s top tier, finishing bottom of the Division 1B section.
Their early season struggles were justified by a late return to training after coming off the back of a prolonged season that headed into the depths of the winter. “We went back a week out from our first game in the Clare Cup against Kilmaley and that brought its own challenges because we were clearly well behind the curve, and the reality is we’re just about catching up now. We had a poor run in the Clare Cup by our standards, we got relegated, but we got an opportunity to look at some new players as well. The Munster championship I think finished up in the first week of December, but you need a mental break as much as a physical break away from it, so we just decided to park things until the end of March,” outlined manager Gerry O’Connor.
O’Connor’s management has seen some alteration for their bid to retain the Canon. Limerick coach, Liam Cronin bows out, the Cappamore native was part of the Clare management for three seasons with O’Connor. He was involved with Éire Óg for the past two seasons in what was his second stint with the club. S&C coach Owen Tarrant has also left their set-up. Entering the void is Kieran McDermott, a leading figure in restructuring the underage systems for Clare hurling development squads who has also been involved with UL and Mungret. Newtownshandrum’s Cathal O’Brien who was part of Ben O’Connor’s Cork ticket and was involved with Newmarket-on-Fergus last season replaces Tarrant.
A significant amount of his panel was juggling week-on-week for a more sustained period than ever before last season, having a game almost every weekend until the end of November. O’Connor is adamant that the balancing act of both codes is a good complaint to have. “We’ve got into the rhythm of it now over the last five or six years, particularly as we’ll call them the mature dual players, the likes of Ciarán Russell, Aaron Fitzgerald, Darren O’Brien, David McNamara, Oran Cahill and Jarlath Collins, those lads’ bodies are so resilient now to the rhythm of going every second week that they don’t see it as a challenge at all. They’re doing that for so long now that their bodies are so resilient they just slot in mentally and physically and accept that they’re going to be on the go for hopefully a long number of weeks.
“I think the most important thing in any dual club is that there’s a really good, open, communicative relationship between both managers. We’re very lucky in Éire Óg that the football management led by Shane Daniels are exemplary in terms of how they communicate and in terms of how agreeable and how open and honest the conversations are. Shane is well aware of the challenges for the dual players and it’s about managing load. We’re very lucky that we’ve a good and open communication system there in place”.
A target will naturally be placed on the Ennis club’s backs after they ended a thirty-five-year wait for the Canon Hamilton last season, although they aren’t feeling any added pressure from carrying the champion’s tag into the campaign. “We’ve probably been around in one shape or make over the last ten years with Éire Óg and we approach the championship with the same attitude every year, and that is with our priority of not to get relegated because it’s such a seriously competitive and a brilliant championship. I think it’s that jeopardy starting out every year in those three games, there’s huge pressure to win your first game. Our attitude has always been to try and win that first game, get a performance and get out of the group. Every team starting out next Friday and Saturday, that will be their ambition as well because the reality is every team will be harbouring aspirations of winning a championship”.
He continued, “We drew great inspiration from seeing Feakle win the championship in 2024, for us there was definitely a realisation there that we’re able to match any team, and if we perform, get a bit of luck and go on a run anything can happen and the whole year opens up for you, but every other team will be thinking the way Éire Óg are thinking. That’s the reality, and the beauty, and the competitiveness of the Clare senior hurling championship. Our focus will be purely on Crusheen and nothing beyond that”.
Shane O’Donnell called time on his Clare career following their All-Ireland semi-final loss to Limerick, but he will be available to the Townies for the club campaign. “Shane closed one chapter there two weeks ago up in Croke Park, but we’d like to think that he’s turning a few pages in the next chapter with us for the next couple of weeks at least anyway”.
O’Connor, alongside Scariff’s Donal Moloney, is one of the managers that the 2024 Hurler of the Year would have played under at inter-county level. The pairing were in charge of Clare’s senior hurlers from 2017 to 2019, but they will be in opposite dugouts for the round two clash between their respective sides. “We met Donal a couple of years ago as well down in the Bridge and people missed a huge photo opportunity that day because we parked our cars up beside each other and walked in our respective colours, but nobody took much notice,” he jokingly recalled. “Donal and myself go back a long way, and I think Scariff and Éire Óg both setup very similarly because of the amount of work that we’ve done together and the amount of similarities in our styles of play. That’s going to be an interesting challenge inside in the Park in a couple of weeks’ time for sure”.
Last Friday, Éire Óg’s Under-20 Munster and All-Ireland winning contingent of Robert Loftus, Marco Cleary, Darren Moroney and Niall Doyle were welcomed to the clubhouse to celebrate coming off the back of such a successful year with the county. “Some of those lads are facing into their third year, some of them are facing into their second year and more this is their first year, but it just goes to show the youth in our squad, which can be a challenge. We’d rather have a more mature, experienced team and when you look at the face of it, a huge amount of young fellas have come in over the last two years into our squad. I suppose the niggle you would have is that a lot of players perform really well in their first year, then they have that second year syndrome where people start to find out about you. It would be great if we had a more mature team but that’s just the way it is. We have a lot of inexperienced players heading into the championship again, but it’s a huge opportunity for them to learn and grow and develop”.
Éire Óg Factfile:
Management: Gerry O’Connor (manager), Ronan Keane (coach), John Russell (coach), Kieran McDermott (coach), Cathal O’Brien (S&C)
Captain: David Reidy
Key Player: Shane O’Donnell
One to Watch: Niall Doyle
Fresh Blood: Niall Doyle, Luke Vaughan
Departures Gate: Michael Moloney (emigrated), Niall McMahon (regraded), Aidan McGrath (regraded).
Treatment Table: Gavin Cooney (achilles)
Titles won: 16 (1890 as Ennis Faughs, 1911 & 1941 as Ennis, 1914, 1915, 1924, 1929, 1934 as Ennis Dalcassians, 1928 as Ennis/Clarecastle, 1956, 1957, 1966, 1980, 1982, 1990, 2025 as Éire Óg)
Last year’s run: Won the Clare SHC for first time in 35 years.
Schedule of games:
Round 1 vs Crusheen on Saturday July 25th in Gurteen at 15:00
Round 2 vs Scariff on Saturday August 8th in Zimmer Biomet Páirc Chíosog at 16:00
Round 3 vs Broadford on Sunday August 23rd in Shannon at 13:00
Championship power ranking (1 = unlikely winners, 10 = strong contenders): 9
