When the final whistle blew and Clare had lost to Cork last Saturday evening the initial silence among the Clare supporters was punctuated by a couple of boos, quickly overwhelmed by applause and cheers. A difficult year had ended with a gutsy display in a match that could have swung either way until the last puck. There was nothing in that outcome for Clare at first, but plenty going forward.
That sense of appreciation was mirrored in the dressing room. Different players expressed their gratitude to the management for their work, some even said they enjoyed the year. Plenty of dressing rooms have witnessed grand acclamations of loyalty often cast aside for a new manager inside a few days, even hours. But this felt genuine. Two years on the back foot together had bonded them.
Although the majority view favours Brian Lohan staying on, it is believed he is unlikely to accept less than two Covid-free years to properly get legs under the team with all the appropriate supports in place. Will he get that? The Thursday night before the Cork game, the squad turned up at Cusack Park for training to find the pitches had not been marked out.
It was a throwback to the various external problems assailing the team for the past two years, set aside for a few months to focus on their hurling. Their summer had already been thrown by the inexplicable citing of two Clare players as close contacts after a series of positive Covid tests in the Wexford team following a league game, and relations between Lohan’s management team and the board cooled as the season went on, veering again towards non-existent.
Various low-level issues arose at every championship game, all potentially avoidable with more support from their own officials. Their kit van was denied access to the venue at one game. The sliotars used by Clare were queried before another, even though they were licensed and approved by the GAA. So was the position of their table before the water break against Tipperary even though Tipp’s appeared to be set up in the same spot up the field.
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A request from Munster Council officials and Pat Fitzgerald, their own county secretary, to change their goalkeeper’s jersey at half-time during that game was also refused unless the request came from referee Fergal Horgan. It never did. An effort to move Clare substitutes to a shaded area out of the heat before the Wexford game in the qualifiers sparked another small spat.
Davy Fitzgerald’s departure from Wexford on Friday will inevitably colour any conversations in Clare about Lohan’s future, even if immediate speculation linked Fitzgerald with Galway if Shane O’Neill steps away, or an extended break from management. That in itself quickly sparked conspiracy theories in Clare.
Word of a director of hurling post has already leaked from the likely recommendations of Clare’s Strategic Review Committee, commissioned this spring to bring a root-and-branch analysis of Clare GAA’s structures this September. Is Fitzgerald positioning himself for that job? Lohan had objections to Fitzgerald’s potential presence on a hurling committee due to be formed last winter by Clare GAA. That committee remains unformed. With his links to Wexford now severed, is the way cleared for Fitzgerald to take that role ?
Both Fitzgeralds have also requested a review by the Director of Public Prosecutions into the decision not to pursue criminal proceedings over alleged social media abuse. According to a report in the Irish Examiner, Pat Fitzgerald intends on taking a civil case if the review fails.
It all feeds the mood. The outcome of fresh tests on the water quality at Clare’s Centre of Excellence at Caherlohan, previously described in a review of Clare hurling in 2019 as “not suitable for consumption” are still not known. Any questions related to what the county board describe as “legacy issues” must now be submitted in writing by clubs before being addressed at county board meetings.
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While the newly constituted Club Clare have established themselves as an effective fundraising operation, the county board launched their own house draw independently. A scoping exercise into the financial accounts of the previous supporters’ club between 2013 and 2016 has been kicked down the chain from the GAA’s National Audit and Risk Committee to the Munster Council. That has provoked more questions about the GAA’s actual appetite at national level to become engaged with issues in Clare.
The strategic committee is expected to deliver interim reports in the coming weeks with concerns already gathering that the sharpest edges of their report this September might be blunted well in advance if they cannot mobilise support within the clubs. So many questions still in dire need of an answer. Settling Lohan’s future is only the beginning.