Frank looks forward to Sunday.
When you’re raised in Cratloe history decrees you don’t dream of winning a County Final. Surely the God’s could never be that generous. Instead you dream of playing in one. Front lawn theatre. You perfect your walk behind the Tulla Pipes, whether you’ll stand or sit for the photo, how you’ll burst from dressing room and maybe you’ll swing a point or two between the rhododendrons before your Ma calls you in for the supper. You may have been young but you weren’t stupid. Dream’s of speeches and laps of honour were left to young boys from the ‘Bridge or Clarecastle.
But next Sunday sixty minutes of hurling divide Cratloe boys from that dream. The end of one of the longest roads in from the grassy margins of Clare Hurling.
On the Tuesday morning after their semi-final victory against Kilmaley, Frank O Brien’s car pulls up beside two lads strapping a blue and white flag to a telephone pole outside the church. Frank was ten when he was brought to Kilkishen to see Cratloe win the 1935 Junior Championship. With the Kennedy’s, Quain’s and Frosts, Cratloe’s hurling folk started rubbing their hands and after downing Mountshannon the dreaming began. Two years later they earned the right to rub shoulders with the bluebloods with an Intermediate final win against Scariff. The journey to Senior Hurling brought them face to face in a semi final with the middle of Feakle’s three in a row teams in ’39 and as with every hard luck story for a small club, the margins between hero and zero were ever so small.
“The referee that day was Stephen Donnellan”, says Frank. He’d be a grandfather of the young Donnellan from the Mill’s that’s hurling with Clare”. “We were up two points and waiting for his whistle when a ball broke in around our square and hopped off Dan Hayes’s boot past Andy Dundass in goal”. “Feakle had the Loughnane brothers, we had two Quains on the line that day that Clare could hardly do without, not to mind Cratloe.”
“The next year Dan Quain moved to play with Young Irelands in Limerick” Frank remembers. And slowly Cratloe’s pomp from the ‘30’s withered away. “We won another Intermediate in ’43 but it was a last hurrah really and we made no real go again at the Senior”.
Frank was eighty four on his last birthday. Imagine, he has seen a man fly a rocket to the moon and back, a world war come and go, and yet he has never seen Cratloe go as near to a County final as that day in ‘39. “Sure it would be great”, he says and he thinks about adding weight to his thought but seventy years of Cratloe’s watery promise stalls him.
Frank looked out the window at the soupy sky last Saturday and, like most, probably saw another chance at glory washing away in the gullies. In the normal world all the scripts pointed to a Kilmaley win. Their Quarter Final joust with Inagh/Kilnamona made both of Cratloe’s games with Broadford look like Tupperware parties. Now they were on a wet pitch and against a team about as comfortable with the wintery conditions as an octopus is with a bicycle. That they didn’t had a lot to do with a man called Chaplin.
“The kitchen radio was burnt out so I listened to it down the hall”. “Lily was calling me to the dinner but needless to say it had to go back into the cooker”. “ I could hardly believe the wireless as I was listening”. “Davy Fitz was helping with the commentary and one name that kept coming up was Sean Chaplin”. “He had some game”. ‘Chappy’ could well be the face of Cratloe’s story this summer. Like his teammates, he too stumbled this far in the championship – twice exiting the stage before a final whistle. But on Saturday last Frank’s radio didn’t lie. Chaplin cut and scythed his way through Kilmaley’s hailed midfield diamond pouncing on every breaking ball and even finding enough time to raise a white flag while he was at it. All this while he marked a lad called Colin Lynch.
All over the pitch, Cratloe’s young guns paid little heed to reputations but if they needed inspiration to do so they need have looked no further than next Sunday’s opponents. In the Senior relegation final of 2005 a six point win for Cratloe sent Clonlara through the trapdoor to Intermediate hurling. Their stay there wasn’t a long one and since emerging again as County and Provincial Intermediate Champions in 2007 rarely has a side swept to County glory with such momentum.They stand as only the second side ever in Clare to put the two grades back to back. In 2008 it didn't matter who stood in Clonlara's way on the field of play but when you come in from the dark hurling corners (and maybe the corner of Clare) Clonlara came from to lift the Canon Hamilton, you have to work that extra bit harder to prove yourself to ‘the powers that be’.
“ Take the papers -”, says ‘Clon captain Tomás O Donovan in this week’s Clare People. “ When we played Newmarket the last day, they were favourites. “When we played them in the final last year they were favourites. “Even after beating them in the final, they were favourites when we met in the Clare Cup Semi Final – that’s something we remember”. “It will take years for Clonlara to get the respect of other clubs, we want to be there and stay there”.
Newmarket certainly felt the wrath of a team wanting ‘to stay there’ a fortnight ago and if you were in a bookies he’ll tell you the form suggests Cratloe will suffer the same fate come Sunday. But Cratloe were not one of the sides Clonlara moved aside on their way to their County title of ’08 or their way back there in ’09 and if you believe in ‘bloodlines’ we actually have a good history against our neighbours. Fifty years back in the Junior Final of 1959 Cratloe came out of Tulla 2-3 to 1-5 victors over Clonlara. We’d take the same score on Sunday.
All the small things will give the likes of Frank O Brien a smile this week. If you stood still long enough in Cratloe someone could lay a ladder to your shoulder and tie blue and white bunting to you. On Thursday morning, De Domhnaigh - Cluiche Ceannais and Chlair, Creatlach v Cluain Larach, will stand in bold print on it’s own in the backpage of ‘The Champion’. And next Sunday the sky can grow as black as it likes, he will leave the radio off and jump in the car for Cusack Park. And he will watch Cratloe, his own Cratloe, at last play in a County final. May it have been worth waiting for.
Ar Aghaidh Linn.
When you’re raised in Cratloe history decrees you don’t dream of winning a County Final. Surely the God’s could never be that generous. Instead you dream of playing in one. Front lawn theatre. You perfect your walk behind the Tulla Pipes, whether you’ll stand or sit for the photo, how you’ll burst from dressing room and maybe you’ll swing a point or two between the rhododendrons before your Ma calls you in for the supper. You may have been young but you weren’t stupid. Dream’s of speeches and laps of honour were left to young boys from the ‘Bridge or Clarecastle.
But next Sunday sixty minutes of hurling divide Cratloe boys from that dream. The end of one of the longest roads in from the grassy margins of Clare Hurling.
On the Tuesday morning after their semi-final victory against Kilmaley, Frank O Brien’s car pulls up beside two lads strapping a blue and white flag to a telephone pole outside the church. Frank was ten when he was brought to Kilkishen to see Cratloe win the 1935 Junior Championship. With the Kennedy’s, Quain’s and Frosts, Cratloe’s hurling folk started rubbing their hands and after downing Mountshannon the dreaming began. Two years later they earned the right to rub shoulders with the bluebloods with an Intermediate final win against Scariff. The journey to Senior Hurling brought them face to face in a semi final with the middle of Feakle’s three in a row teams in ’39 and as with every hard luck story for a small club, the margins between hero and zero were ever so small.
“The referee that day was Stephen Donnellan”, says Frank. He’d be a grandfather of the young Donnellan from the Mill’s that’s hurling with Clare”. “We were up two points and waiting for his whistle when a ball broke in around our square and hopped off Dan Hayes’s boot past Andy Dundass in goal”. “Feakle had the Loughnane brothers, we had two Quains on the line that day that Clare could hardly do without, not to mind Cratloe.”
“The next year Dan Quain moved to play with Young Irelands in Limerick” Frank remembers. And slowly Cratloe’s pomp from the ‘30’s withered away. “We won another Intermediate in ’43 but it was a last hurrah really and we made no real go again at the Senior”.
Frank was eighty four on his last birthday. Imagine, he has seen a man fly a rocket to the moon and back, a world war come and go, and yet he has never seen Cratloe go as near to a County final as that day in ‘39. “Sure it would be great”, he says and he thinks about adding weight to his thought but seventy years of Cratloe’s watery promise stalls him.
Frank looked out the window at the soupy sky last Saturday and, like most, probably saw another chance at glory washing away in the gullies. In the normal world all the scripts pointed to a Kilmaley win. Their Quarter Final joust with Inagh/Kilnamona made both of Cratloe’s games with Broadford look like Tupperware parties. Now they were on a wet pitch and against a team about as comfortable with the wintery conditions as an octopus is with a bicycle. That they didn’t had a lot to do with a man called Chaplin.
“The kitchen radio was burnt out so I listened to it down the hall”. “Lily was calling me to the dinner but needless to say it had to go back into the cooker”. “ I could hardly believe the wireless as I was listening”. “Davy Fitz was helping with the commentary and one name that kept coming up was Sean Chaplin”. “He had some game”. ‘Chappy’ could well be the face of Cratloe’s story this summer. Like his teammates, he too stumbled this far in the championship – twice exiting the stage before a final whistle. But on Saturday last Frank’s radio didn’t lie. Chaplin cut and scythed his way through Kilmaley’s hailed midfield diamond pouncing on every breaking ball and even finding enough time to raise a white flag while he was at it. All this while he marked a lad called Colin Lynch.
All over the pitch, Cratloe’s young guns paid little heed to reputations but if they needed inspiration to do so they need have looked no further than next Sunday’s opponents. In the Senior relegation final of 2005 a six point win for Cratloe sent Clonlara through the trapdoor to Intermediate hurling. Their stay there wasn’t a long one and since emerging again as County and Provincial Intermediate Champions in 2007 rarely has a side swept to County glory with such momentum.They stand as only the second side ever in Clare to put the two grades back to back. In 2008 it didn't matter who stood in Clonlara's way on the field of play but when you come in from the dark hurling corners (and maybe the corner of Clare) Clonlara came from to lift the Canon Hamilton, you have to work that extra bit harder to prove yourself to ‘the powers that be’.
“ Take the papers -”, says ‘Clon captain Tomás O Donovan in this week’s Clare People. “ When we played Newmarket the last day, they were favourites. “When we played them in the final last year they were favourites. “Even after beating them in the final, they were favourites when we met in the Clare Cup Semi Final – that’s something we remember”. “It will take years for Clonlara to get the respect of other clubs, we want to be there and stay there”.
Newmarket certainly felt the wrath of a team wanting ‘to stay there’ a fortnight ago and if you were in a bookies he’ll tell you the form suggests Cratloe will suffer the same fate come Sunday. But Cratloe were not one of the sides Clonlara moved aside on their way to their County title of ’08 or their way back there in ’09 and if you believe in ‘bloodlines’ we actually have a good history against our neighbours. Fifty years back in the Junior Final of 1959 Cratloe came out of Tulla 2-3 to 1-5 victors over Clonlara. We’d take the same score on Sunday.
All the small things will give the likes of Frank O Brien a smile this week. If you stood still long enough in Cratloe someone could lay a ladder to your shoulder and tie blue and white bunting to you. On Thursday morning, De Domhnaigh - Cluiche Ceannais and Chlair, Creatlach v Cluain Larach, will stand in bold print on it’s own in the backpage of ‘The Champion’. And next Sunday the sky can grow as black as it likes, he will leave the radio off and jump in the car for Cusack Park. And he will watch Cratloe, his own Cratloe, at last play in a County final. May it have been worth waiting for.
Ar Aghaidh Linn.
