Coach Kinnerk helps Clare’s younger stars refocus for Under-21 decider

Not many know about Paul Kinnerk. A Limerick footballer, a Leaving Certificate maths teacher in St Caimin’s CS in Shannon, and a hurling coach of some renown.

Clare GAA had embraced Kinnerk before prodigal goalkeeper Davey Fitzgerald returned from Waterford, as he managed the minor hurlers to Munster titles in 2010 and 2011.

On Sunday evening Kinnerk’s name was bounced around the bowels of Croke Park like the sliotar that somehow found its way into Nicky O’Connell lámh (He who shipped it on to Domhnall O’Donovan, who put it into the lap of a grateful Clare supporter down the Canal End).

Take Colin Ryan’s brain freeze from minutes 44 to 48 in the All-Ireland final when he miscued back-to-back efforts from lifted strikes.

"I said it in the build-up to the game that when you have a routine and working it on with Paul Kinnerk, sometimes things are going to happen and you're going to make mistakes but it's about believing in what you're doing and that you're doing it right," said Ryan.

No rest
Much like the 14 under-21 players in Clare's wider senior panel, there is no rest for Kinnerk over the coming days as preparation for Antrim in the All-Ireland final at Semple Stadium on Saturday demands the concentration of a mathematician.

We felt it prudent to speak with Clare’s joint under-21 manager Gerry O’Connor yesterday but really it was his comments, that appeared on thescore.ie, after defeating Tipperary in the Munster final that deserve rehashing.

“Paul Kinnerk started all of this, he’s so intelligent,” said O’Connor. “We work away while he is with the seniors and then he comes back and gives us our masterclass.

“We’re only in high infants compared to him. He’s superb, to be fair. He has a highly-intelligent mathematical brain. He thinks and thinks and thinks in between every training session. Touch, tackle, touch, tackle, and it came off phenomenally tonight.”

High praise for a man a year shy of his 30th birthday.

"The four guys that played on Sunday [David McInerney, Colm Galvin, Tony Kelly and Podge Collins] will just doing basic recovery and rehab for the week," O'Connor said. "No physical work at all.

Refocus
"The biggest challenge we'll have with those guys will be to mentally refocus them. Park the All-Ireland replay and focus on Antrim.

“The mental fatigue of playing week in, week out ... they are young guy and it is their first senior season and they are trying to merge a lot of games into a very short period. Since we won the Munster under-21 title [on August 8th] and because Clare had to come through the qualifiers there has been a fair few games over the past two months.”

The other concern would be Clare’s unused substitutes Séadna Morey, Shane O’Donnell, Peter Duggan and Paul Flanagan. But along with Cathal O’Connell, brother of Nicky, who almost made Sunday’s 26-man squad, this is one of those welcome problems.

“The key thing is our group of guys on Saturday evening have to give a top class collective performance.

“There is an added bonus of guys’ individual performances moving them up the pecking order in the senior panel.”

This week’s preparation was already planned out, in conjunction with Fitzgerald’s management, last week.

“Davy has been extremely co-operative and we have the common denominator of Paul Kinnerk in both camps anyway. We have a clear strategy in place. It works very well.

“Paul is the coach in our camp as he is responsible for getting them to the level of performance they have been operating at over the past two years.”

So, while there is no All-Irelands captured in 2013 yet, O’Connor agrees this is a special time for Clare hurling.

“It has been a fantastic journey.

“The county board put in place a pretty ambitious coaching and development programme over the past six, seven years and that’s working really well now.