This article is from page 125 of the 2007-11-27 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 125 JPG
“THE BEATLES once said _ that they were bigger than Jesus but I’ll tell you – there’s a manager, a selec- tor and a chairman down in Clonlara and they are bigger than the Beatles ever were.” That was Clonlara cap- tain Paul Collins assessment of his management team and _ whatever about being compared to the son of God, manager Jim Gully is certainly the ‘special one’ of Clonlara hurling right now.
Along with Niall Hogan, Kieran Whelan and Pat Conlon, Gully has transformed this Clonlara side into the slick machine that appeared on Sunday. It’s been a long hard year for the South East Clare side but now they will feel that all that hard work has been worthwhile after winning their first Munster title. No more so than Gully himself as he collected his thoughts after the game.
“T suppose you look forward to the county championship all the time and it is your goal but this is just an added bonus really. I think since the Cork game, our lads took on a whole new way of hurling really. They seem to hurl with a bit more freedom and the same pressure didn’t seem to be there. The fact that you know very little about the opposition and they know very little about you, the game tends to be open and you are 20 minutes into the match before you realise what way the other team are and what way your own team are go- ing. It’s a fantastic competition and it brought our club alive. That’s all I can say, it brought it alive.”
There were no massive comebacks needed on Sunday but leading all the way through didn’t seem to sit well with Clonlara at times. Like Muham- mad Ali’s rope a dope tactic in the famous Rumble in the Jungle fight against George Foreman or similar
to a hurler who needs a belt before they start to perform, Clonlara ap- peared more comfortable in previous games having to battle back from behind rather than hold the lead for the hour.
“We had kind of spoken about it for the last two weeks and we said that someday these comebacks won’t work for us,’ mentions Gully. “We had driven it into them that they were going to have to give everything in the first half and then I think the way we started the second half, probably scoring five or six points, suddenly the lead is gone out to nine or ten and really they weren’t causing us an awful lot of problems. It think at that stage it was thirteen points to three and unless they scored two or three freak goals, we were always going to be there. They hadn’t really threat- ened our goal and I thought that we should have been further ahead real- ly. We had a couple of great chances where we probably took a step too many or didn’t let the ball go when we should have but to finally win it was great.”
Gully also picked out John Conlon for special praise after the county minor scored 1-3 from play with the goal in particular coming at a crucial stage of the second half when Clon- lara seemed to be letting the Limer- ick side back into the game.
“John Conlon played a magnificent part today. Without doubt he gave an exhibition of scoring – both points and that goal. To pick up the ball 50 yards out and solo 30 yards and just let fly was amazing and I think he scored fantastic points as well into the bargain. He was just on fire today and I think his goal probably killed the game as a contest.
‘The two previous games stood to us. Fellas were much more confident as well today. We took the lead and once we got the goal, we were nev-
er really threatened after that. Ger O’Connell pulled off a fantastic save at a vital time as well and after that. Dromin-Athlacca probably dropped their heads a bit.”
In his speech, Munster chairman Seamus O’Gorman stated that the Clonlara bandwagon rolls on but af- ter four games in five weeks, Gully felt that his side now need a week or two off to recharge the batteries be-
fore contemplating the All-Irleland series.
“We’ll take a break now. The lads need a break. We’re out now since the second week in February and the lads deserve a break. But we’re going to go there and give it a good lash. We said all along that we were going to do Clare hurling proud and I’d like to think that we have.”
It will be the new year before Clon-
lara are back in action and if Paul Collins’ comparisons with the man above are to be believed, perhaps Clonlara have been aided by divine intervention along the way. Nothing would surprise anyone about this Clonlara side.