Nobody cares who Ollie Baker is in Athlone. It is that kind of town and it suits him perfectly. Because he is tall and distinctive looking, he gets noticed occasionally but most of the time, he is anonymous. Don't be mistaken, he is no wallflower. Baker will tell you that on weekends like this around the home place, he floats on the banter, the back-slaps, the humbling clasp of a weathered hand as much as anyone. Clare hurling lifts Clare county and the pleasure he takes from that is always new.

But on a daily basis, he has found himself content to be at a remove. Garda life has given him that. Back in February, he spent his nights huddled in a squad car on a back road near Burnfoot in Donegal, contemplating a snowdrift. The landscape was people-less. It was about as far from tomorrow's hot masses, from the unyielding noise as anyone could imagine.

The midlands is a good base, an easy drive to his station in Ballinasloe, which is a fine town to work, with problems no more or less serious than other towns in the west.

Last year, on the day Clare fell 2-19 to 1-14 in the face of Tipperary's noble rage and the country paid tribute to the passing of an era, Baker knew early that it wasn't in him.

"I wasn't tired. It is strange when you look back on it because beforehand I thought I was in great shape, totally geared up for it. Personally, I had a terrible day, I completely under-performed. Looking back, I would have prepared differently in the way I approached the season. The freshness just wasn't there. It was in the body but not in the brain to translate it, the mental side wasn't right. And you realise it pretty quickly, even walking around behind the band. It just wasn't the same, something that was there in 1995 and '97, even '98, was gone. And you can't predict it either, it is not until you get out on the pitch that you can tell."

Was that afternoon an ending? As he left the ground that night, Baker honestly didn't know.

"We had an inkling Ger Loughnane was going to pull out and there was a mention that one or two of the squad would leave. But if you were to ask people on the Monday after the game, you would have got a lot of `don't knows'," he says.

Baker himself felt spent, as if he had stopped running for the first time after a three-year All-Ireland trail with his club St Joseph's Doora-Barefield and Clare. Privately, he acknowledged that the summer off might be no bad thing.

"But then it could be lonely too when you were sitting watching TV in the evenings with the sun splitting the rocks outside and you'd be thinking to yourself `this isn't right, I should be out there'. After a while, I began to enjoy the free time, it was a novelty but all the time you'd miss the hurling. Three weeks after the Tipp game, myself and Seanie and Jamesie (McMahon and O'Connor, his club and county team-mates), played a match together and we all had unbelievable games."

Unbelievable games. Baker has been up to his neck in so many that it is the wonder the passages of play do not become blurred. The classics, of course, have involved elemental matches against Tipperary, 70-minute epics that were of the championship but also a little beyond it, caught up in the personalities of the day and perceived slights and in the peculiarities of the region. The rivalry has been presented in stark, dramatic terms as a local war, granite pride crashing against granite pride.

"I think the only people, thankfully, who didn't lose the run of themselves through it all was the players. For all the matches we had, there wasn't one row between us. They were tough, close encounters but that is what the teams train for. Okay, we might not be sending each other Christmas cards but there was no violence. We have met one another on social outings - it wouldn't be arranged but we could speak, find things in common and get on. There is mutual respect there that materialised over the years and we fought hard to get that, we are not seen as poor old Clare anymore."

And even Baker, still in his 20s, can remember those feelings. Down in Killarney in 1986 and watching the saffron and blue side going well from the stands and then just this haunting, empty feeling sweeping through the crowd. A dart of resignation.

"You just weren't confident they were going to win and that nervousness seemed to extend to the players and they sort of froze. Looking back, you would see it so often, a Clare lad just sort of standing back and getting totally wrapped up in the magnitude of the occasion and the next thing some Cork player has the ball in the net and we'd be wondering what was going on."

It was perhaps the fear of that paralysis that was the source of the tremendous fire and effort of the Loughnane era. Baker was just 21 in 1995 and in reflection he admits there was something magical about the time that possibly altered the local people's sense of themselves.

"The people in Clare probably felt it more so than the players. It was a combination of things. The summer was fantastic. Then Guinness came in with the brilliant billboards everywhere and then we came from nowhere, this colourful team and went on to play a final against Offaly, another new force. There was definitely an uplifting time for spirits in the county. Then, in '97, Ennis was awarded the information age town and that seemed to kick-start it again."

They were, as he says, exciting times and in many ways unanticipated. Those All-Ireland years just flowed over him.

"The old cliche is that you dream of it. Well, you don't actually. You would be scared to dream because if you didn't fulfil them, the rest of your life would be a disappointment."

And so now to what lies ahead. Tomorrow is a crossing point and Baker is making no heady pronouncements. He knows well enough that the disappointment could all be stacked ahead. This is a different time. No longer do Loughnane's mellifluous tones coax them through the torturous dusk sessions in Crusheen. Cyril Lyons has his own style. All Baker knows is that he has relished every moment of this early season. The voices are fresh, as are some of the panel but the feeling, the energy, is the same.

After Clare torched through Limerick one Thursday in the league, the world at large was convinced that Clare were on the verge of a second coming. Baker smiles. They hurled well, Limerick maybe flattered them, end of story. Tomorrow is a blank canvas.

He will use Colin Lynch is a gauge. Baker's midfield partnership with the solemn looking Lissycasey man is one of the many compelling aspects of the current Clare era. As he sees it, it was the centre or the scrapheap for them.

"I started out as a back and couldn't quite cut it there and Colin was a forward and didn't quite cut it there, so they stuck us in the middle and let us do a bit of everything," he laughs.

Whatever. It has worked. He enjoys Lynch, a man "who doesn't suffer fools. If I need to be told to pick it up, he's the man to do it." And Baker, in turn, will vent his lungs elsewhere. There is no hegemony in the squad. Opinions are welcomed.

Cyril Lyons orchestrates his side with a less flamboyant hand than his predecessor, he is his own man and Baker's faith is absolute. "Comparisons at this point are unfair. Ger had a few years to get it going. Cyril has been around Clare hurling long enough, his knowledge is immense and he has the rapport. All I know is that at training, it feels very good right now."

The 1990s - Clare's decade - are gone. Ollie Baker has seen Loughnane just once since last summer's closing. And even though the cast is still recognisable, the dynamic is different. Yet thrilling too. There is no feeling like it.

So when he is stopped on the street and asked the only pertinent question, asked if they'll beat Tipp, Ollie Baker pauses and his laid-back features break into a grin and he stands in his uniform and says: "ah, sure, we'll try our best."

It's a fair answer, because how will he know until the time. Until he hits the ground running hard and the colours roll and the old park trembles and he is out there, scything the cropped blades with the same, timeless stroke. Primed.