*Dave Hannan (right)
YEAR one of Dave Hannan’s tenure as Corofin manager has surpassed expectations in a season where they have consistently defied the odds.
Relegated from senior last season, Corofin were not earmarked as favourites to win the Paddy Browne Cup but spirited displays and a refusal to die has led them to the decider where they face last year’s beaten finalists Clarecastle.
Ex Galway goalkeeper Liam Donoghue opted not to continue in charge leading the club to begin a search to put together a new ticket which led them knocking on the door of Dave Hannan.
Hannan recalled, “I only stopped playing around five years ago, I was involved with the junior team in the club, from there we progressed on up and took on the intermediate team this year, I don’t think there was anyone jumping at the opportunity but the players came asking and we stepped up to the plate”. He is joined on the management by former club players Ronnie Meere, Donnchadh Kelleher and Luke O’Loughlin, long serving club members Gerry Hanrahan and Kevin Kelleher.
New additions to their management include Galway goalkeeper Éanna Murphy who has qualified for a first Galway SHC final in fifty years with his club Tommy Larkins and Portoe’s Mark Gennery who coached Nenagh CBS to win the Dr Harty Cup in 2024 and was also part of the Fitzgibbon Cup management with Mary Immacualate College that season.
In 2012, Dave married Deirbhile Kelleher and they moved to Corofin. “I moved out and married a Corofin woman in 2012, I got involved with the club from there, I’ve kids involved in the club, her family would be steeped in the club. She is a daughter of Declan and Mary, they are well involved in the club and Clare GAA down through the years, I bought into that when I came out, I had no choice I suppose but I still have the Limerick flags up”.
Elder members of the Corofin panel would have been former teamamtes of Dave’s when he transferred to the club. “I’d know most of the players anyway. I played a small bit of hurling and football when I came out first with them so I would have played with some of the older players and trained with them a good bit. I would have left when younger lads like Gearoid Cahill came onto the panel, some of the younger players I wouldn’t have known only to see them around, the senior players like Fionn Clancy, Gearoid Kelly, Eoin Davoren, I played with all of them”.
A Sergeant at Henry St Garda Station, balancing work with the commitments of a club manager are tricky, Dave admitted. “Trying to juggle both is tough, my co-workers tell me all I’m doing in work is preparing for matches, people say it about management and it is nearly a 24 hour job at club level, we’re only intermediate but the amount of work that goes into is crazy, I wouldn’t like to even think about moving to senior or inter-county teams with the time they put into it”.
That Hannan is still double-jobbing in October is a very positive sign, he acknowledged. “We went down trying last Wednesday night in the bottom pitch in Corofin, they say when you’re training in the bottom pitch in Corofin in the winter you know you’re going well which is great, the players love going down to the bottom pitch because they know they are at the business end of the season”.
Availability of personnel is the biggest concern in the Corofin camp ahead of the final with Cillian McGroary (hamstring), James Organ (hamstring) and Conor Leen the chief injury doubts. “We’re down James Organ who is still not right, it will be a fifty fifty call for him, Cillian McGroary is still not pick from his hamstring injury, it is slower than we thought he hasn’t trained in six weeks, James hasn’t trained in three weeks since damaging his hamstring in extra time against Bodyke, Conor Leen has a slight knock and hasn’t trained since the last match. Other than that, that is pretty much it, we’ve a few knocks here and there but a few you’d be okay with it but they are three of our main starters”.
McGroary has been out of action since the end of August, the timeline would suggest he could be right for the final. “You’d be hopeful but he hasn’t trained, he needs to be on the pitch training and he knows that himself, he is putting in some hard work to get back, we could have risked him against Whitegate but he wasn’t one hundred percent so we went with the physio’s advice, please God he will be raring to go on Saturday”.
Flights have been booked for former Clare footballer Jamie Malone to return from the Middle East for the final, Hannan confirmed to The Clare Echo, “he’s on the way home and he’ll be there. It took him a few minutes to get going the last day, he hadn’t played hurling in three years, there was a bit of nerves coming back into the panel but he stood up, he is unbelievable, the experience he has, his strength and power, he didn’t hurl in three years but caught the ball and put it over the bar, even for the goal he stopped it going wide and laid it off to Diarmuid Cahill for the goal, moments like that justify him coming home, he is a serious player”.
Hurling has been the sole focus for Corofin following their exit in the Clare SFC at the beginning of September. “From a management point of view it is brilliant for us, unfortunately the lads while they put everything into the football they just came up short and they were very unlucky, again it was extra time and that stood to them going into what we faced in extra time for the hurling quarter-final and semi-final, they knew what they had to do and the fitness especially from the football with the hard running, it tells when it comes to the hurling”.
Losing to St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield in extra time of the Clare SFC provided learnings for the dual players. “That stood to them, the reaction to that game. With the dual club it is hard going for the players, they embrace it all and they face those challenges which is good. We didn’t get over the line in the football but we did in the hurling, it is fine margins, there was a kick of a ball in it for the football, if the lights didn’t go off in Clarecastle we could have kept pushing on”.
Getting some breathing space between games has been a welcome relief, considering the fixture headaches they had to contend with this season. “That period alone when we had football on Friday, hurling Tuesday against Sixmilebridge then the following Sunday against Whitegate is tough going, they have full-time jobs in between this too, it is alright for us when we’re not out on the field but we’d be hitting every ball on the sideline”.
‘Football fitness’ has been an help, Hannan noted. “It does give you an edge but Bodyke and Whitegate were two fit teams, two very well coached teams, Bodyke probably thought they had the job done, Whitegate thought when they got the goal on sixty plus minutes that they were through but our guys don’t throw in the towel, they keep going and going, that is all you can ask of them”.
Players kept driving Corofin on to force their memorable comebacks, he recalled. “During the Bodyke game we never really got a run on them and they were on top, but with this team they never say die, you always think of a next chance and next ball, Damien O’Loughlin kept saying next ball, when you have those type of players on the field then you always have a chance. When the goal went in against Whitegate you were thinking it was so late but you go back again to two weeks previous and what they can do, they did it again in fairness and drove on in extra time”.
Very little separates any of the teams in the Clare PIHC, Dave noted. “It’s been great, we started off against Tubber, it was a close game, we were beaten by a point and had a free at the end to try level it but it just fell short. We regrouped, we had Parteen/Meelick next, we beat them, we were up eleven or twelve points but they kept coming, our boys dug in, that was a real important game to get over the line because coming off the back of last year when we hadn’t won a game in the championship, we hadn’t won a game in the Clare Cup this year, then when Parteen/Meelick got the goals we could have been thinking it was slipping away from us but they dug in, they got the result and that was the leap forward that we needed and the starting point of our season. We pushed on, we had Sixmilebridge on the Tuesday, they were fighting for their lives and they are a serious side when they are in that position, we were tired after the two games in close succession but we got over the line. Whitegate then in the last round, they pipped us but there’s nothing between the teams in this championship, it is close all the way through”.
Confidence may have been low in the camp at the time of their arrival as a management as they struggled to win games. “When we took over during the Clare Cup we were down a good few players and our main starters, then we brought on other lads and they were getting experience against the top teams, in our group we played two of the senior semi-finalists, Inagh/Kilnamona and Scariff, we played teams like Clonlara, I know we got beat well but we learned an awful lot and the players know the level they need to get up to. The Clonlara game finished 3-19 0-19, it was a game that showed exactly what these boys are made of, we were down a few players and we stood up against a Clonlara team that had John Conlon playing and a few county lads released, it was a great test. It is better to be playing in the Clare Cup, we may not have been winning games but we were playing to a higher standard than Division 2 and still playing against the best teams”.
Few neutrals predicted Corofin would have a chance at the beginning of the championship, the former Claughaun hurler noted. “I was reading the programme at the start of the year for the group stages, everybody picked Clarecastle with their predictions, nobody was looking at Corofin that is for sure, I know and the players know what is inside of them, it is 2023 since we last won it and I know there’s a lot of players gone since that day, they know and have been around the block, they have won intermediate hurling and football titles, they know how to get the job done and we could see that the last few days but we have one more step to go. I saw Clarecastle against Tubber and in other games, they are a formidable team, they have stars all over and they have their fella (Bobby Duggan) brought back from Canada too, it will be a tough battle, no doubt about it but every team in this championship can beat each other on the day, we’ll be backing our lads every day of the week”.
