*Clare goalkeeper Eamon Tubridy. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
A RETURN to inter-county football was not on the radar for Eamon Tubridy but he has found a new lease of life while nailing down the number one spot as Clare’s goalkeeper.
Eamon played championship for Clare in 2018 and was part of the panel in 2019 and 2020 where he featured in league outings but club has been the focus for the netminder since then, until of course he received a call out of the blue from Peter Keane, fresh from his appointment at the end of October.
Initially, he suspected that he was the subject of a joke when a call from the Kerry native came through. “I wasn’t expecting it, Peter (Keane) rang me and I actually thought it was someone pulling my leg, he rang me and I brushed him off a bit, next thing we had a few more chats and he is a very hard man to say no to, he explained to me what his plan was and it sounded fairly good, since I’ve gone back I’ve really enjoyed it”.
Tubridy was Clare’s first choice goalkeeper in 2018 when he kept clean sheets in their Munster clashes with Limerick and Kerry. He picked up a knee injury during Clare’s 1-19 2-14 qualifier win over Offaly which saw him substituted on forty two minutes and meant he missed their subsequent 2-16 1-15 round three qualifier loss to Armagh when Robert Eyres was between the posts.
He recalled, “I came in 2018, I came in during the middle of the league, played league and championship, I hurt my knee against Offaly in the qualifiers, I came off and we played Armagh the week after but I wasn’t ready for that game. I tried to play through the club championship but I had to get a procedure done in my knee and I was out for a few months, I came back in 2019 and I ended up tearing my PCL in my knee again so that put me out for a while, then Stephen Ryan came in and kept his place through COVID, my last involvement was actually against Tipperary below in Thurles, Stephen was playing that day but I played two league games before it, I decided to step away after that”.
Returning to the fold has been “really enjoyable,” he told The Clare Echo. “There’s great lads involved in the squad, the training is top notch, we have James Hanrahan with the goalkeepers, his training has been brilliant, Shane O’Rourke our S&C coach, with my age and the whole lot he doesn’t expect me to do what everyone else does, he takes it a bit easier on me I suppose”.
He is thirty seven but “I’m not near Cluxton yet,” the Doonbeg native flagged. Dublin’s Cluxton is forty three and is the holder of nine All-Irelands, six All-Starts, five National Leagues and 18 Leinster medals, a collection that any sportsperson would envy.
Within the five years he has been away from the inter-county scene, standards have “gone up another notch, the nutrition especially and S&C, when we came back in December it was a tough slog for about a month, there was a lot of emphasis put on fitness especially with the new rules and more running, I think our fitness levels are through the roof now and we’re finishing games very strong. Our nutritionist Nicole Shaw has been brilliant with us especially on the carb loading and getting the protein intake throughout the week it has gone to a new level from before, lads are tracking their calories to get into top shape. Even the video work has gone to a new level, the clips are sent to out us after every game, we’ve to study the clips and the opposition, it was at a serious level before and it has just gone another step or two”.
Despite the rising pressures associated with inter-county players, the atmosphere remains positive in the Clare panel, he said. “It is actually a fairly relaxed camp, there’s great craic to be had, the boys over us, Peter is a right character, there’s brilliant craic and there is a great group there, it is very easy to come training, we have a good laugh before training and afterwards when we’re eating it makes it very easy”.
Goalkeeper sessions during the league saw Mark McInerney join Tubridy and Tristan O’Callaghan, the Éire Óg man has returned to the forward division following tweaks to the 3v3 rule, in a bid to prevent sides using their goalkeeper as a spare man in attack, the rule now stipulates that teams must keep four players in their half of the field – which may or may not include the goalkeeper. It removes the 12v11 scenario that had become a talking point.
Eamon recalled, “The way the early rounds of the league were the keepers were coming out to create the twelve v eleven up top and I suppose Clare were trying to adapt to that, it was something I enjoyed a lot coming up the field and trying to create an overload, I wasn’t doing the scoring like other goalies were but it was something I really enjoyed, the rules changed for the Laois and Offaly game and it was something I found difficult because you’re not getting involved in the play and there’s long periods of play that you’re not involved in and it is hard to keep your concentration but it’s something to get used to”.
Keeping the 12v11 would have been the preference of Eamon. “With the goalkeepers it’s gone back to real old school now, you’re back to basics with the longer kickouts, the thing I find very frustrating is if that your corner back or full back are in trouble and they’re standing there near you but you can’t get involved or receive the pass back to give them a hand out, it feels like sometimes you’re a passenger but I understand why the rule is there because when the ball was being passed back to the goalie it was slowing down the game”.
Indeed the aforementioned Stephen Cluxton has been lauded for the return on his kickout retention. New rules have also changed the dynamic for netminders according to Tubridy. “What we struggled with early in the league was our kickout retentions, when we were looking across it there it seemed every team was struggling with their kickout, I think in the last few games we got to grips with it by bringing Emmet (McMahon) to midfield and giving Brian (McNamara) a hand out there. Getting the restarts away is the thing, the easing off of the twenty second rule has made a big difference, you have that bit more time to pick off your shorter kickouts, they are still hard to get away but when you had that twenty second window you were coming out and concentrating on getting that ball away as fast as you can, it wasn’t really an option to do a short kickout but now since they have relaxed the rule we have time to get runners for the kickout and it gives Brian and Emmet more time to get out the middle and get set up for the longer kickout. The main thing is you’re not involved in the play as much anymore and it is just concentration, you’re talking to the backs and communicating, there is a lot of communicating involved, you’re in charge of not letting three defenders go past the halfway line and stuff like that, it is a lot more communication and the kickouts”.
“Before you were expected to get off the short kickouts, now at the start of the year we were getting them out long and the pressure was put on the half backs and half forwards to get in around the breaks more, before it was all on the keeper if you weren’t getting them off and now the pressure is put onto the half backs and half forwards to get in for breaks, there’s a lot more pressure on the two boys midifield to get in for breaking ball, the last two games in the league we really improved on our kickouts. The FRC released the percentages for the league, the average for kickout retention was 55% and we were at 57% so we were just above it, the last two games we really upped our percentages, it is something we have improved and worked a lot on,” he added.
Looking back on the league, he felt decision making in front of goal was one of the big learnings for Clare as they narrowly missed out on promotion. “The big learning especially from the Offaly game was we tried to force it a bit, you were trying to force two pointers but as we could see with Kerry in the Division 1 final, they didn’t kick any two pointers but they won it handy, you have to take your points as they come and the two pointers will come eventually but don’t force them or kick wayward wides, when we reviewed the Offaly game the amount of chances we missed was crazy. The other learnings were turnovers, you can’t turnover the ball because your three at the back will be totally exposed, turnovers now are massive, we’re trying to get them down to single figures because that is what the top teams are at now”.
Saturday in Zimmer Biomet Páirc Cíosóg (14:00) is Clare’s first championship outing but also the chance to qualify for a third Munster final and to secure their place in the All-Ireland series. “It is straight in at the deep end, it would be great to qualify for a Munster final but our record with Tipperary isn’t great, over the last eleven meetings between Clare and Tipperary, Clare have only came out and won twice so we are really up against it, we have made Cusack Park a bit of a fortress during the league, we’ve won all our games there so we have to keep that up and be on top of our game to get over this one, there is never much between Clare and Tipperary”.
His last inter-county involvement was of course Clare suffering a shock Munster semi-final loss to Tipperary in 2020, a game played behind closed doors in pouring rain during the COVID season. “We came third in Division 2 of the league that year, we can’t underestimate anyone, Stephen O’Brien kicked 1-8 the last day and they were missing players earlier in the league that have come back so they are coming into a rich vein of form, they have won their last few league games and had a good win over Waterford the last day”.
His own club Doonbeg are immensely proud to have one of their own back playing championship football for the county while it is another big plus to have rising star Darragh Burns on the panel. “It’s important for clubs to have lads involved with the county team, it brings them on a lot and they can bring stuff back to the club that they have learned, Darragh (Burns) has been brilliant, he is Doonbeg’s main man now and has taken over from David (Tubridy), he was brilliant in the championship last year. He’s biding his time, he is chomping at the bit to come in but he’ll just have to be patient”.
