JAMES O'CONNOR INTERVIEW: Keith Duggan finds the Clare forward in confident mood and happy about the state of his game
James O'Connor grins. He has heard the accusations before. Not bein' smart or anything, but the Clare forwards, aren't they kind of . . .
"Maligned and much maligned over the years," he fills in helpfully. "I suppose our defence, well the spine of our defence, has two of the greatest players ever and I don't say that lightly. Then the likes of Brian Quinn, Frank (Lohan), these are great men. Even the manner of game we play I think gives this team a lot of pride. We may not be the greatest artists and we mightn't match Kilkenny for skill but when you give your heart, people in the county take pride in that. I think the forward line, well, I think the six of us will get it together some day soon and really turn somebody over."
O'Connor is a polished diplomat when it comes to answering the endless doubts voiced about the Clare forwards. He doesn't protest or get mad or argue, he lets people think what they like. It is the Clare way.
Clare have won two All-Irelands learning to live with sly slights. Now they are on the cusp of a third. If you want to hear the we-are-all-about-heart myth, they will happily peddle it. They know what they are about. O'Connor has consistently been one of the best attackers in the game throughout a senior career that has orbited around his magnificent 1997 All-Ireland final winning point. It was a genuinely sensational conclusion to an electric summer of hurling.
Ger Loughnane, watching O'Connor's stroke from behind the goal for which it was destined, would immortalise the moment with the words: "As long as I am on this earth, I will see that ball coming." For a team so laden with dreary grafters, it was a remarkably poetic moment.
In those years, O'Connor established a set of personal standards that involved him being a central figure in loose play, a free-taker and a lively contributor of scores from play. He was everywhere and people came to expect that. This was one of the first seasons where it was felt his form dipped, that he wasn't edging over the few crucial points that so often had been enough. O'Connor now feels that the second half of the quarter-final against Galway was the turning point both for Clare and himself.
"No question. We felt we had had an advantage over Wexford as they were coming off the back of a savage game against Kilkenny. But at half-time against Galway, it was do or die. We felt that after all the training we had done, to go out and give an insipid performance like that was no way to leave the championship. So our backs were against the wall and we went for it.
"Once a team wins, personal performance is secondary. But yes, early in the season I was concerned that things were not going well for me. But all of the Clare forwards - Gilly, Alan Markham - have had low spells and come out of it again. We would work hard in training and eventually it would turn around on the field. And that probably happened for me against Galway."
Like the other senior players who came of age under Loughnane, O'Connor had begun to privately fret about recapturing the art of winning that had been their second nature. Oh, they had come close but three years without a win breeds its own complications.
"Last year gave us a lot of hope. We could have beaten Tipperary then, we felt, and to see them go on and win the All-Ireland gave us a good indication. And we were lucky that the qualifiers suited us. For many of us, when you are beaten and play badly, you just want a chance to atone for that. We got that and found a bit of momentum.
"You live for times like this, getting ready for an All-Ireland and you would have doubted if you would ever get back to that place again. Now, we are still a work in progress. But finals don't always pan out the way you think, so we have a good chance."
Their passage has been lit by the guile and craft and knowing gathered from 1995-'98. It had lain dormant among them and perhaps they were surprised to find it was still there. Against Galway, they hurled terribly for 35 minutes but stayed level with scores and then squeezed out a win in a shoot-out. In the semi-final, they stayed calm when Waterford raced off in a scoring frenzy and then ran out of ideas. Clare methodically set about winning. Kilkenny is a different story though. "If we go six down against Kilkenny, it is 'good night, Irene'. They came down in the league and turned us over big time. I think they laid down a marker then that they were All-Ireland contenders. We were well aware of that and haven't forgotten it."
