Cratloe Vs Sixmilebridge - Sunday 8pm
For an old-timer or two at this side of the border, the six or so lines in this evening’s 'Champion' might very well carry enough weight to join the ’09 scrapbook. “If Cratloe build on their opening round win, says the paper, they should be ahead at the final whistle” . Imagine! Cratloe favourites to beat the Bridge. Halcyon days indeed.
One of the men leading Cratloe over the whitewash this Sunday will hardly have the scissors out however. While all around him seems giddy at the thought, Mike Deegan knows Seamus Hayes’ pen can’t put the ball over the bar. And ‘Spider’ can surely remember the last time this fever reared its head. He was in the thick of it. Hurling at right half back on a Cratloe team with the cheek to sidle toward a semi final in their first year in twenty-four back at Senior level. They were too dizzy with the excitement to see the ‘Bridge waiting down the tracks.
And so gave rise to the line that comes out like a wooden spoon from the drawer when a Cratloeman gets a little too proud in Brandons ….. 1-23 to 0-4.
But that was then and this is now. “Show us your county medals” used to pop up in Brandon’s too before Paudie Chaplin put that one to bed last October. The Bridge havent seen a Quarter Final since 2007 and the paupers from across the square are County Champions.
They’re not rude enough to admit it but if that stray away from hurling’s top table in Clare didn’t irk a Bridge supporter enough in the past few seasons, watching ‘the neighbours’ grow cocky in their absence must surely have shook salt to the wounds.
Recently they called on an old friend to make amends. Every parish has its fair-haired boy. Sixmilebridge’s happens to have red hair. Christy ‘Rusty’ Chaplin was brought in to rekindle their fortunes after failure to breach their group in 2008. As a player, Chaplin was the trademark of much of the Bridge’s best days. Little fuss, little nonsense and even less respect after the handshake. His swashbuckling at midfield did a lot to fashion Sixmilebridge’s All Ireland Club success in the Spring of ‘96, the same season they went through Cratloe for a shortcut. Many of the Clare players and management of the golden 90’s openly recall Chaplin as the litmus test for the ‘if’s’ and ‘maybe’s’ of their panel in Loughnane’s fabled training games. Marking, or moreover, ‘surviving’, Rusty at training was either the test you passed to play or, every bit as often, the rock a candidate perished on.
Last season, his first as manager, was his welcome pardon. Twelve months to pail out the water and plug the holes. The real judgement will start in 2010 and Chaplin has certainly set about his business like a man who knows.
Until this year, the past four Clare Cup meetings between Cratloe and The ‘Bridge had produced two wins for each – only the minimum tipping the balance on each occasion.
This April the Bridge won the contest by twelve.
Infact Inagh/Kilnamona are as yet the only team to have taken full points from them in a campaign that currently has them sitting on a Semi-Final spot.
Having Niall Gilligan back has done their recovery little harm. Gilligan’s swansong years with Clare were amongst his best and his form certainly seems to have travelled back to his club with him. He has been a regular high scorer in this year’s league and against Cratloe alone his unfamiliar roving beneath puckouts from his usual berth at full forward set up two of their three goals. And Gilligan may be every bit as influential in Rusty’s set up off the grass too. The last man standing from The Bridge’s most recent County Championship win in 2002, he is the perfect seam between the village’s glory days and the green shoots the club have been rearing until now.
Young and all as that talent is, with Rusty and Gilligan in their camp they’ll have an age old Bridge trait – they’re not afraid of Cratloe.
Last season when the two collided at the semi final stage of the U21 championship, Cratloe found themselves in a similar position to this Sunday. Favourites. The Bridge set upon them like an burst bee-hive and prevailed by four. How dare we. Many of the tormentors - Caimin Morey, Paudi Fitzpatrick, Shane Golden and possibly Barry O Connor will be trusted to do the same this weekend.
So those who feel that Cratloe don’t wear the favourites tag well mightn’t be far wrong but truthfully, no matter what ‘The Champion’ may say , Cratloe aren’t really expected to win this Sunday. Personnel has very little to do with a derby. Like so much else on the hurling field, it’s all to do with History and there’s a generation or two at both sides of the river who feel that little short of an apocolypse or a Cratloe five in a row will change matters. The veterans on the street in Sixmilebridge will be quick to remind their players of that and the ‘natural order of things’ in these here parts during the week.
So should we expect Cratloe to stand aside so as not to upset the folklore? It's unlikely. They've never had players to stick their tongue out at tradition like they have now and they hurl like a side unaware of it. And let us remind ourselves that they had started doing it before last season.
A much forgotten about fact in the run up to Sunday has been the outcome the last time the sides met. In 2008's championship Cratloe prevailed for the first time in nearly forty years of this rivalry under a gale in Eire Óg by 1-12 to 0-14. So a win on Sunday wont be unchartered. Of course ’08 will have small bearing on Sunday's game other than the odd reminder in either dressing rooms but it may be worth wondering who is further along in their development since?
A green slip of a lad called Liam Markham saw his first three minutes of Senior hurling that evening as a bloodsub while Barry Gleeson, who’s second half goal effectively won the contest, is only now fastening his spot in Cratloe’s first fifteen. Add to that the names of Cathal McInerney, Podge Collins, James Enright, Conor Ryan and Enda Boyce and its evident that Cratloe’s panel has been beefed up. Only one of their fifteen has retired.
Admittedly, Sixmilebridge were cornered into a position of having to strip away from theirs since and whether Sunday is a year, or maybe even a round, too soon for the replacements to shine remains to be seen.
Intriguingly, it was said that this year was the first since 1958 that no Sixmilebridge player lined out for Clare in the Munster Championship. Now there’s two ways of reading into it and you’d be very foolish to go along with the most obvious. With club training unfractured by the county panel you can take it that the ‘Bridge will be quite undistracted from the job at hand in Cusack Park on Sunday. Clonlara very nearly found that out to their cost against Ballyea last weekend so we can’t say we havent been warned.
Next to winning the Canon Hamilton beating the neighbours in championship shouldn’t be far down the wish-list of a club hurler in this parish . Down to simple numbers, they’ll get more opportunity in The ‘Bridge over the years to gloat than we will. So while there is the talent at the blue side of the Pike Bridge it should be a case of making hay while the sun shines. And the weather is promised good for Sunday.
Throw in is at the late time of 8pm on Sunday evening in Cusack Park. Referee for the tie is Rory Hickey.
Ar Aghaidh Linn
For an old-timer or two at this side of the border, the six or so lines in this evening’s 'Champion' might very well carry enough weight to join the ’09 scrapbook. “If Cratloe build on their opening round win, says the paper, they should be ahead at the final whistle” . Imagine! Cratloe favourites to beat the Bridge. Halcyon days indeed.
One of the men leading Cratloe over the whitewash this Sunday will hardly have the scissors out however. While all around him seems giddy at the thought, Mike Deegan knows Seamus Hayes’ pen can’t put the ball over the bar. And ‘Spider’ can surely remember the last time this fever reared its head. He was in the thick of it. Hurling at right half back on a Cratloe team with the cheek to sidle toward a semi final in their first year in twenty-four back at Senior level. They were too dizzy with the excitement to see the ‘Bridge waiting down the tracks.
And so gave rise to the line that comes out like a wooden spoon from the drawer when a Cratloeman gets a little too proud in Brandons ….. 1-23 to 0-4.
But that was then and this is now. “Show us your county medals” used to pop up in Brandon’s too before Paudie Chaplin put that one to bed last October. The Bridge havent seen a Quarter Final since 2007 and the paupers from across the square are County Champions.
They’re not rude enough to admit it but if that stray away from hurling’s top table in Clare didn’t irk a Bridge supporter enough in the past few seasons, watching ‘the neighbours’ grow cocky in their absence must surely have shook salt to the wounds.
Recently they called on an old friend to make amends. Every parish has its fair-haired boy. Sixmilebridge’s happens to have red hair. Christy ‘Rusty’ Chaplin was brought in to rekindle their fortunes after failure to breach their group in 2008. As a player, Chaplin was the trademark of much of the Bridge’s best days. Little fuss, little nonsense and even less respect after the handshake. His swashbuckling at midfield did a lot to fashion Sixmilebridge’s All Ireland Club success in the Spring of ‘96, the same season they went through Cratloe for a shortcut. Many of the Clare players and management of the golden 90’s openly recall Chaplin as the litmus test for the ‘if’s’ and ‘maybe’s’ of their panel in Loughnane’s fabled training games. Marking, or moreover, ‘surviving’, Rusty at training was either the test you passed to play or, every bit as often, the rock a candidate perished on.
Last season, his first as manager, was his welcome pardon. Twelve months to pail out the water and plug the holes. The real judgement will start in 2010 and Chaplin has certainly set about his business like a man who knows.
Until this year, the past four Clare Cup meetings between Cratloe and The ‘Bridge had produced two wins for each – only the minimum tipping the balance on each occasion.
This April the Bridge won the contest by twelve.
Infact Inagh/Kilnamona are as yet the only team to have taken full points from them in a campaign that currently has them sitting on a Semi-Final spot.
Having Niall Gilligan back has done their recovery little harm. Gilligan’s swansong years with Clare were amongst his best and his form certainly seems to have travelled back to his club with him. He has been a regular high scorer in this year’s league and against Cratloe alone his unfamiliar roving beneath puckouts from his usual berth at full forward set up two of their three goals. And Gilligan may be every bit as influential in Rusty’s set up off the grass too. The last man standing from The Bridge’s most recent County Championship win in 2002, he is the perfect seam between the village’s glory days and the green shoots the club have been rearing until now.
Young and all as that talent is, with Rusty and Gilligan in their camp they’ll have an age old Bridge trait – they’re not afraid of Cratloe.
Last season when the two collided at the semi final stage of the U21 championship, Cratloe found themselves in a similar position to this Sunday. Favourites. The Bridge set upon them like an burst bee-hive and prevailed by four. How dare we. Many of the tormentors - Caimin Morey, Paudi Fitzpatrick, Shane Golden and possibly Barry O Connor will be trusted to do the same this weekend.
So those who feel that Cratloe don’t wear the favourites tag well mightn’t be far wrong but truthfully, no matter what ‘The Champion’ may say , Cratloe aren’t really expected to win this Sunday. Personnel has very little to do with a derby. Like so much else on the hurling field, it’s all to do with History and there’s a generation or two at both sides of the river who feel that little short of an apocolypse or a Cratloe five in a row will change matters. The veterans on the street in Sixmilebridge will be quick to remind their players of that and the ‘natural order of things’ in these here parts during the week.
So should we expect Cratloe to stand aside so as not to upset the folklore? It's unlikely. They've never had players to stick their tongue out at tradition like they have now and they hurl like a side unaware of it. And let us remind ourselves that they had started doing it before last season.
A much forgotten about fact in the run up to Sunday has been the outcome the last time the sides met. In 2008's championship Cratloe prevailed for the first time in nearly forty years of this rivalry under a gale in Eire Óg by 1-12 to 0-14. So a win on Sunday wont be unchartered. Of course ’08 will have small bearing on Sunday's game other than the odd reminder in either dressing rooms but it may be worth wondering who is further along in their development since?
A green slip of a lad called Liam Markham saw his first three minutes of Senior hurling that evening as a bloodsub while Barry Gleeson, who’s second half goal effectively won the contest, is only now fastening his spot in Cratloe’s first fifteen. Add to that the names of Cathal McInerney, Podge Collins, James Enright, Conor Ryan and Enda Boyce and its evident that Cratloe’s panel has been beefed up. Only one of their fifteen has retired.
Admittedly, Sixmilebridge were cornered into a position of having to strip away from theirs since and whether Sunday is a year, or maybe even a round, too soon for the replacements to shine remains to be seen.
Intriguingly, it was said that this year was the first since 1958 that no Sixmilebridge player lined out for Clare in the Munster Championship. Now there’s two ways of reading into it and you’d be very foolish to go along with the most obvious. With club training unfractured by the county panel you can take it that the ‘Bridge will be quite undistracted from the job at hand in Cusack Park on Sunday. Clonlara very nearly found that out to their cost against Ballyea last weekend so we can’t say we havent been warned.
Next to winning the Canon Hamilton beating the neighbours in championship shouldn’t be far down the wish-list of a club hurler in this parish . Down to simple numbers, they’ll get more opportunity in The ‘Bridge over the years to gloat than we will. So while there is the talent at the blue side of the Pike Bridge it should be a case of making hay while the sun shines. And the weather is promised good for Sunday.
Throw in is at the late time of 8pm on Sunday evening in Cusack Park. Referee for the tie is Rory Hickey.
Ar Aghaidh Linn
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