Peter Duggan this evening returns to the stage that made him famous.
In the drawn 2018 All-Ireland semi-final against Galway at Croke Park, with Clare going blow for blow with the reigning champions coming down the stretch, Duggan took off towards the opposition goal, shipping tackles from four different players.
Having to play the ball but knowing he couldn’t take it in his hand again, he hopped it off his stick twice as he staggered to his right and as the ball sat up, he let fly and split the posts for the ultimate free-wheeling point. The score was greeted with celebration by Clare supporters but with awe by all.
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Most players, when under that sort of duress, particularly late on in a tight game, would have recycled possession in the hope of a higher percentage scoring opportunity elsewhere, if they hadn’t managed to be dispossessed by then. That wouldn’t be Duggan’s way, however.
“That’s the thing about him,” says Fergal Lynch, former Clare player and selector and a Clooney-Quin clubmate of Duggan’s.
“If he did miss that and he got the opportunity to do the very same thing again 10 minutes later, he would have done it again, while other players would have gone into themselves and said, ‘I’m not going to do this now because it didn’t work the last time’.
“He’s a guy now that would stand on the far 65 and hit the ball over the bar with one hand.
“If you stood with him for a couple of minutes pucking around you’d just say, ‘This guy is just different gravy’.
“There’s no doubt that he’s probably the best that we’ve ever produced in the club alongside Ryan Taylor, the current midfielder for Clare. Peter, he’s an enigma really.”
For all his talent, it was 2018 before he commanded an audience outside of Clare. But he won an All-Ireland senior medal five years earlier and played during that campaign, scoring 0-4 in the qualifier win over Laois.
He didn’t see any further game time, however, with the management feeling he was still a year or two off it as he continued to develop with the under-21s, with whom he won three All-Irelands.
In 2018 he was the top scorer in the Championship with 3-76 from eight matches as Clare blew a glorious opportunity to get to an All-Ireland final, particularly in the replay against Galway, with a less rigid framework a factor in his form.
“Too much structure or too much direction for Peter, it doesn’t really suit his temperament and the way he plays,” says Lynch. “He’s a guy that likes to go out and play off the cuff.”
They failed to get out of the group in Munster the following year, by which time Duggan had itchy feet. At the end of the year he was bound for Australia and though Clare were largely competitive under Brian Lohan in each of the last two seasons, they weren’t nearly as menacing as they have been this year.
Duggan’s return has had much to do with that.
“A lot of people had question marks over whether he’d come back at the same level as he did prior to leaving but he actually came back even stronger and fitter again and worked extremely hard,” Lynch explains.
“He surprised a lot of us to be honest. Guys that go way like that, they do find it hard to get going and get back into the groove of it.”
Lynch speaks of a grounded individual who gives of his time freely.
“He’d be invited to seven and eight-year-olds’ birthday parties and people would be offering him money and he’d be getting embarrassed, he wouldn’t take it.
“A very kind person. You’d actually be proud to say that he’s from our club.”
After returning to Championship hurling seamlessly during the Munster round robin, he was somewhat subdued in the Munster final against Limerick and quarter-final win over Wexford.
Lynch contends that he still commands so much attention that he creates space for others, but concedes that they need him fully firing from here on if they are to progress.
“They do, they do need him to be playing well. He does need to be at the top of his game because coming into the latter stages, the cream rises and he would be disappointed in himself for not being as good as he should be.
“But he’s a guy that’d be very determined to try and prove that he is still one of the top players that we have.”
PETER DUGGAN FACTFILE
AGE: 28
CLUB: Clooney-Quin
HEIGHT: 6’4”
WEIGHT: 14st 9lbs
CHAMPIONSHIP DEBUT: 2013
HONOURS: 1 All-Ireland SHC (2013), 1 Allianz Hurling League (2016), 3 All-Ireland under-21 HC (2012-14), 3 Munster under-21 HC (2012-14), 1 Munster MHC (2011), 1 All Star (2018).
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