This article is from page 35 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 35 JPG
SHANE O’Donnell is one of the last to make his way the dressing room – even with his right hand bandaged, bloodied and broken he’s still out on the field for over half and hour after the game.
Signing autographs. Standing in for selfies. On and on it goes. There’s no orderly queue – more like mayhem as they swarm around and look for a piece of him. Look for a drop of his royal hurling blood even.
Eventually, all the demands of the teeming crowds of kids and teenagers are met – all that’s missing is the Garda escort like the one he needed to escape from Sixmilebridge after last year’s Goal Challenge.
He’s glad to get away, elated, but slightly deflated.
Elated to get game time after all his injury woes since April.
“It’s been a long time,” he says. “Almost four months since my last competitive game. It was great to be back out on the pitch, but that’s why you’re training and doing all the re- hab for.
“I never envisioned that it would be that long before I got back playing, but things like that happened and I’m just delighted to be here and part of this out on the field,” he adds.
Elated to rattle the net once more.
“It was on a plate,” he says of his latest flash of the ash. “I called for the ball, but Reidy has unbelievable vision anyway and playing with him at club level we have a decent enough idea of where each other is most of the time. He’s a fantastic player and it was a great ball into me and I couldn’t miss it from there.”
It came at a time when Clare couldn’t miss, racking up a 1-15 to 0-5 interval lead, with O’Donnell’s goal being the decisive blow that finally turned this Munster final into a procession.
“It clicked for us,” says O’Donnell. “We seemed to have our touch right for the first half. We gave Cork every respect as they deserved – if we didn’t they would have been all over us, so we played our game and it seemed to work.
“The message at half time was just to drive on – if we switched off they would be on top of us and they did for a while. For a couple of minutes there it looked as if they might storm into the game but we held them off and played out the last minutes of the game.”
The only downside was O’Donnell’s injury, later confirmed as a hand fracture that consigns him to another stint on the sidelines. A huge loss to his club Éire Óg, but there’s the AllIreland to aim for in the distance.
“We’d love to win the All-Ireland and there are a couple of games to go before that will be in our minds. We have the All-Ireland semi-final and without the seniors that’s all we have in our heads now, apart from the club. Hopefully we can get over the semi-final and then we can deal with all the three-in-a-row stuff after that.”
By which time O’Donnell will be fit and raring to go once more.