This article is from page 38 of the 2014-08-05 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 38 JPG
AS A member in the prestigious ‘five-in-a-row’ club that carved out their own piece of history with successive provincial crowns at minor (2) and Under 21 (3) levels, Aaron Cunningham was inevitably one of Clare’s leading lights in their latest triumph on Wednesday.
Described as a ‘savage outlet’ by joint-manager Gerry O’Connor af- terwards, chief targetman Cunningham raided for four points as Clare blitzed the Rebels on home soil.
“It’s a brilliant achievement for everyone and for a few of us, that is our fifth Munster title back-to-back so that’s kind of unheard of in Clare and we’re delighted with that.
“And definitely doing it in Cusack Park in front of a home crowd is what we’ve always wanted to do and I’m sure if it was on down in Cork, they would love to be playing in front of their home crowd.
“In fairness, the last couple of occasions when we’ve been playing here, the crowd have been the 16th man for us and have really got behind us.”
The crowd didn’t have to be as influential as the Tipperary match as Clare led with a degree of comfort from start to finish in another consummate display.
“We were always confident but I would never say we were cocky. We always know we have more in the tank but we never took Cork for granted at any stage there, even with ten minutes to go.
“The supply to us in the forwards was excellent. In fairness to the lads out the field, they’re unbelievable at picking out the pass inside and I suppose when Cork took their sweeper out midway through the first half, it opened up a lot more for us inside so the ball coming in was of a higher standard.”
However, their unprecedented suc- cess in recent years has also provided a large dollop of experience not to take any team for granted in their pursuit of a three-in-a-row of AllIreland titles.
“It is the ultimate goal but we aren’t even thinking about a third All-Ireland because we know the upset that Antrim caused in semi-final against Wexford last year and we certainly won’t be taking them for granted at all. So we will be only focusing on that game in the next few weeks.”