Interview/Anthony Daly: He bears the scars of last summer's defeats to Waterford and Kilkenny, but the Clare hurling manager is still standing, writes Tom Humphries

A couple of times last summer he felt his backside hit the canvas. Once he saw it coming. The first time, though, the haymaker hit him blindside. Whoosh! He took the full count. Took a little while to get back up.

No use asking him does he remember it. Better to wonder if he will ever forget. May 16th he calls it, as if it needs no more elaboration than D-Day or Independence Day or 9/11. May 16th then.

You will recall the afternoon, though not with the ease of clarity that Anthony Daly does.

Snaggle-toothed Dan Shanahan feasted. 3-1 for the big man. Waterford, who just a week earlier looked sick and indigent in the league final, soared. A 19-point margin for the resurrection men.

May 16th was declaration day. Teams putting down markers and statements of intent. Clare were blown away. He remembers walking the sideline in near despair.

Did he doubt himself? "Doubt myself?" he laughs. "I doubted everything. Doubted this was happening. Doubted everything I knew. Doubted the lads. Doubted the whole lot. Jesus that hit hard. It was like a death in the family."

He should have known. On the previous weekend Waterford had limped pitifully through a league final. On the same weekend Clare had trained and in their practice game they had never looked or felt as sharp. That day they looked at Waterford on television.

Two plus two equals four. Well, doesn't it? Do the sum. Clare had beaten Waterford in the league. Clare had avoided the league final. Waterford looked miserable in the league final. Clare were flying.

Check and double check. You come out with the same answer.

"We told the lads. I told myself. The league final doesn't mean anything. They're not dead. But all week long the lads are in work or at home and they're getting it in their ear . . . No matter what you tell the fellas they're hearing it all week. 'Sure, ye'll win easy'. 'If ye don't beat that Waterford team well . . .' and it sets you up.

"We were all set up. We were after finishing the league strong. We were flying. We got the sucker-punch."

The aftermath was a mess. Always is. Blood and bruises. The usual investigation. Who to bless. Who to blame. Mostly blame. First, though, he vanished.

The lads were going for a drink on the night of the match. After long abstinence and a humiliation in Semple Stadium he wouldn't deny it to them. Nor would he join them. He went home. He found a solitary sleeping pill in a medicine cabinet, reckoned it had been hiding there since his playing days when sleep was a fugitive before big matches. "I'll take this," he said, "and I'll have a glass of wine."

He slept the sleep of the defeated. Long, hard, unhappy sleep. He knew that on Monday the lads would be about. There'd be postmortems. Inquiries. He was wondering how to face it when there was a knock on the door. The two Sheedys and Tom Howard from Clarecastle. "C'mon, ya hoor." They slipped into a corner of a bar and banned hurling talk. They poured over papers and found horses to lose money on. He decided to kill the days till Wednesday.

"To be honest I just went off on the drink for a couple of days. Up around Galway and north Clare. Just buried myself. Off with a buddy of mine. It seemed grand but then you're worse afterwards, just saying 'aw, you clown ya, what were you at?'.

"Everyone is getting on my case, my wife is upset. Had to get away, though. You'd know your good friends on a week like that."

The day still haunts him. He was in Cheltenham this week and it struck him. You never know.

You never know. Fate makes mug punters of us all.

"You put in the hours and the days and then bang! It's hard to take a defeat like that . . . That Waterford game stays with me. Low, low stuff for a few days I can tell you. Jesus. You can see why fellas keep out of it. I love it. If I could do it for my living I would but there were times walking up and down the line doubting everything I ever knew when I'd have preferred to be up in the stands passing comments to other lads."

The second day his backside hit the floor he knew it was coming but the punch was mesmerising and unavoidable. Clare went to Croke Park and hurled hard for an afternoon and almost burst into the All-Ireland semi-finals. Instead they drew and even as they were taking their boots off Daly knew that Kilkenny probably wouldn't be so vulnerable again the following Saturday.

"I suppose I knew the first day against Kilkenny that it was gone. We could have won it but we didn't. I knew it from back when we were back at our peak. A team takes a draw from you and you say that it isn't going to happen next week lads and it doesn't. It focuses you. Against the good teams you only get the one chance."

So Clare were dumped out of the All-Ireland having been to Croke Park, an excursion which back in May looked most unlikely. We pronounced as we have for half a decade now that they were a team in transition , not being too sure if they had one foot in the grave and were about to climb out or had one foot in and were about to lie down.

Springtime is here though and Clare are still standing, still looking to climb out.

Nobody will be tramping down the dirt for a while yet.

Tomorrow they play Kilkenny again. Last Sunday following a defeat at the hands of Galway, Daly surveyed the three goals which they had stuck past his defence and warned that Kilkenny might put six past the same barricade. One week's beating could be the next week's annihilation.

"I was disappointed against Galway. The heart wasn't there. We didn't seem to have the stomach for the battle. We'd been doing the heavy stamina work all right but we'd hurled for the week before Galway. I thought we'd have more in us."

There are circumstances of mitigation, of course. Clare's transition is a slower business than most would have anticipated but last Sunday outfield the two imperishable Lohans were the only ghosts of '95 still extant. Frank's peregrinations in the forward lines are probably done with now. Brian remains the first choice full back for now.

All the other positions except Seanie MacMahon's are spinning plates which Daly hopes to keep away from the floor.

That sounds unfair. The players are emerging but they come blinking into the light a little bit more slowly than Daly might like. Often it is one step back, one step forward.

Tony Griffin looked to have moved his game to a higher level when playing against Dublin in the league. Then he went back to Nova Scotia. Barry Nugent of Éire Óg became available after his Fitzgibbon exploits and the problem now is imagining where a player of his physical prowess will operate when Griffin is back. Tony Carmody and Andrew Quinn have put down so much work since last November that he thinks they might be ready to jump a level. And so on. Diarmuid MacMahon he liked at centre forward but then there are a lot of takers for Colin Lynch in the same position. And that's just the forwards.

Then there's the meddling. The new rules have affected Clare. If they looked a bit rough against Galway perhaps that's the style they play.

"We don't have the touch that those fellas have. We play a physical game. There's games this year with no physical challenge in them at all. We don't operate that way. We need the bravery and passion of a Colin Lynch to fire us."

For now he's happy enough with the work the team are doing but he knows the Clare public went away from the Galway game shaking their heads. "There wouldn't be huge expectation about us but to be honest that's the way to have it at this time of the year."

His philosophy for training is to keep it fresh. Different venues, different ideas. They've gone to the old murderous hill in Shannon, they've gone to the beach early in the morning, they've been out the road to Crusheen. They've done the hard slog. A low profile won't harm them for a while.

"Last year in the league we played well. We beat Galway and Waterford before the end of March and then in the second section of the league we beat Tipp and Cork. We were flying. Then we hit May 16th."

All this time on they are healed. He wonders if Kilkenny are too. Wonders how much tomorrow in the wan spring light will reveal. "Kilkenny right now remind me of ourselves back in 1999 after the whole Cooney thing the year before. They're in that position. Brian Cody is probably winding them up, they're talking to themselves. One more year. One big push this year. Big push.

"Deep down they don't know if it's in there. Probably it's not in there for them as often as it used to be. Once you've been on the road for a while it takes a lot to get wound up. Last year they hammered Galway and then we nearly took them.

"Wexford beat them. They had a lot of matches. What's in there, have they enough new faces? Have they too many? Have they enough hunger? Those are the things you find out as you go along. Even Kilkenny."

Spring. The evenings getting longer, the time getting shorter. He says right now picking a winner is like looking at the tote board in Prestbury Park. He knows different though. You only blindside Anthony Daly once.