Seán Moran On Gaelic Games: One evening in his later career, or so the anecdote goes, Orson Welles was about to address a sparsely attended meeting of some women's association in America. Introduced at length - director of Citizen Kane, the Mercury Theatre, classical actor, producer etc - Welles gloomily began: "So many of me, so few of you".

Clare hurlers approached that moment last weekend. Twice All-Ireland champions, three times Munster champions, seminal influences on the rebirth of hurling etc. So many of them, so few of you.

How did it come to this? Where once Tipperary and Clare played before crowds of 40,000, an attendance half that size turned out last Sunday. Like once famous artists reduced to hustling in cabaret bars some great players spin out their inter-county careers to the indifference of sparsely attended venues.

Those counties that discovered unwonted good times and prided themselves on the fanaticism of their support are frequently the most forgetful. In the rush to share in the achievement, supporters all too readily style themselves as indispensable adjuncts of success: great to travel and lift the team.

But in the arid days of narrow defeats and overwhelming defeats, stretching over 60 years, would Clare hurling supporters ever have suspected that a team half composed of All-Ireland winners would take the field against Tipperary to such relative indifference?

Manager Cyril Lyons diplomatically put himself in the shoes of the average absentee and blamed the travelling time to and from Cork. For all the plausibility or implausibility of various excuses - the 'back door' opportunity didn't seem to deter either county from travelling in 1997 - the central influence on the high absentee rate was simply lost faith.

After three defeats by Tipperary in successive years the traffic, the live broadcast, the qualifiers, the over-familiarity were merely incidental. In the minds of most lapsed devotees who gathered in The Chestnut Café to watch Clare on television was the fearful belief that with some players in decline and others not proven, the already daunting journey home would again be endlessly disappointing.

The impact, as noted by Denis Walsh in the Sunday Times, was to withhold support at the very time the team would need it most. On The Sunday Game former manager Ger Loughnane made the telling point that players who had done so much and given so much pride and enjoyment would not be playing forever and were entitled to decent support as long as they were putting in such effort on Clare's behalf.

Life however isn't like that. Sporting attendances are built on success. That's why you pick your spot on days like last Sunday and scrabble around furiously in September.

That the team has raged so successfully against the dying of their light will be popular for a variety of reasons. Clare's original appeal at least partly derived from novelty. Hurling's elite caste is unchanging and any challenge that emerges has to be welcome for anyone interested in the game's competitive viability.

To accomplish this with the verve and attitude exhibited by Loughnane and the team was intoxicating for all onlookers so imagine what it felt like in the county itself - even if the chapter closed on a sour note when the point scoring off the field began to undermine that on the field.

Only a few years later that novelty is desperately needed once more. With the almost simultaneous fading of Clare, Wexford and Offaly, the established powers of Cork, Tipperary and Kilkenny have won the past four All-Irelands. At the start of the championship the talk is all lack of competitiveness and poor attendances. Sunday will breathe some life back into the summer.

If there was one performance that gladdened hearts a little more than the rest of what was a memorable team effort, it was James O'Connor's.

He differs from his fellow survivors of both All-Ireland victories. Unlike David Fitzgerald, Brian Lohan, Frank Lohan and Seán McMahon, O'Connor has battled a debilitating downturn in form in the past few years.

On his own admission his confidence was near rock bottom at times and his performances were just parodies of what he could do in his pomp. As a conscientious player whose work rate never flagged it was at times excruciating to see him struggle to try and recapture his best form.

For a player whose dynamism and ability to take responsibility on big match days earned him the 1997 Hurler of the Year award, the soundtrack of sighs that accompanied his performances over the past year or so must have nearly ripped asunder even his considerable resolve. It had got to the point where his starting place was seen as being in jeopardy.

Cyril Lyons kept the faith, making the point that O'Connor's difficulties had their roots in misfortune. "Jamesie has had a succession of niggling injuries for the past few years that he has never had to cope with before. He was used to being fit and working hard on his fitness. Perfect training was rewarded in the performance given. So when he found himself unable to train and maintain his performance levels, he lost confidence."

There's probably a long summer ahead for Clare and the public will expect more than one swallow to indicate as much. But what is important is that O'Connor and Clare have made a start.

It won't have been lost on O'Connor that all those displays from the 1990s appeared to have been erased from the public memory. At least he is now fresh from a memorable performance and that confidence will hopefully be the platform from which his career is re-launched.