With the GAA and GPA still at odds over expenses and the number of training sessions players should be subjected to per week, Jamesie O’Connor maps out a schedule that would make the sports scientists wince.
After losing their Munster and All-Ireland titles in their opening defence against Limerick in June 1996, the Clare players got together again in September and were assigned gym programmes, a relatively novel concept at the time.
O’Connor calculated that he trained 22 times over a 21-day period that November.
“I was living at home,” he explained. “Gym Monday night. Crusheen Tuesday. Gym Wednesday. Crusheen Thursday. Didn’t have to go to the gym Friday but went – I was young, free and single.
“Trained Saturday morning and a match Sunday. And I might have got into the pool on a Saturday evening. Not that I was doing that in March, April or May but the modern player is no different. The genie isn’t coming out of the bottle any time soon.
“It's now like people are suddenly going to start rowing back. If the Kilkenny guys are doing X and the Limerick guys are doing Y, then that’s where the bar is.
“The strength and conditioning now is gone to another level. It’s a lifestyle now. There’s huge advancements in nutrition and hydration. Plus they’re training smart.
“We did gym and stuff up to March. Stopped it. Lost all our gains. Whereas you look at the Limerick lads and wonder if they’ve put on another half stone of muscle over the summer. That’s sports science and progress – that’s not going to change.”
The 1996 Championship was the last that was purely knockout, with Clare’s gruesome training schedule ultimately not doing them any harm as they regained the title the following year, beating Tipperary in the All-Ireland final, who had come through the first ‘back door’.
Tomorrow, Clare become the 11th and final team to enter the Championship with a trip to face Tipp in Thurles in what will be the first of a minimum of four games for them.
But defeat will make it an uphill struggle to emerge from the group with ties against last year’s All-Ireland finalists Limerick and Cork along with League champions Waterford to come.
“It’s a massive game,” O’Connor insists. “Clare will feel if you can win, with two home games to come, we could be one of the three teams. So we’re not without hope.
“There’s a quiet optimism but a realism too that we have work to do to be one of the three teams to come out of Munster.”
Much of Limerick’s current success is harvested from their All-Ireland under-21 victories in 2015 and ‘17 but, after completing the three in-a-row in that grade in 2014, Clare have failed to add to the breakthrough senior title in 2013 and their underage fortunes have dipped alarmingly in the interim.
“After 2013, there was a real opportunity to build but for whatever reason, we haven’t produced the players. Our minor and our under-20 record would reflect that.
“But at the moment there’s a lot of good development work being done at underage level. I’ve a son involved with the 16s. In Flannan’s we’ve had a bit of success as well – that’s starting to turn. Sometimes it’s cyclical.
“Could we have done better in recent years? Has some of the off the field stuff hurt us? Are there people not involved because of some of that stuff? Yeah. But hopefully things are moving in the right direction.
“Hopefully that will be reflected in the performance of the seniors.”
Realistically, Clare’s progress, or otherwise, in this Championship will hinge on the form of Tony Kelly. It’s a heavy load for the 2013 Hurler of the Year to carry but he’s shown no sign of straining under it over the past couple of years.
Perhaps that wasn’t always the case and O’Connor praises his former teammate Brian Lohan for drawing the very best out of him.
“Tony himself will feel that maybe he didn’t play to the level of expectation he or others set,” says O’Connor of his teaching colleague at St Flannan’s in the years after 2013.
“He was targeted every day he went out. There were days when you might get 10 minutes of brilliance, where he’d flash over three or four points, and then he’d maybe be on the margins again.
“But whatever buttons Brian Lohan has pushed, we’re seeing now, and have seen the last couple of years, Tony Kelly playing at a level very few players in the country have been playing.
“He's in a vein of form, it’s massive for Clare that it continues. The evidence of the League is that he managed to pick up where he left off which is going to be crucial for Clare this summer.”
