The underlying feeling between Cork and Clare hurling people is one of respect without animosity
Clare’s Frank Lohan and Cork’s Diarmuid O’Sullivan clash as the teams come out of the dressing rooms before the start of their 2007 Munster SHC quarter-final. Photo: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
In the parade before the 1999 Munster hurling final, Donal Óg Cusack offered the Clare players a short and unsolicited history lesson. The 1990s brought four consecutive Clare championship defeats of Cork, breaking new ground. The win in 1993 was Clare’s first over Cork since 1981; before that the most recent had been in 1955. Then four came in a row, in the space of five years.
Cusack, who grew up near a nine-foot bronze statue of Christy Ring in Cloyne, demonstrated a pugnacious disregard for the nouveau riche.
