Clare stalwart Joe Hayes enjoys harvest after many fallow years

Tales from the dark side of the moon. With 12 minutes to go in the 2014 Division Four final, Joe Hayes got the call to come down from the subs' bench in the Hogan Stand. It caught him off guard, like a proposition disarms a spotty kid at a disco. As far as he could see, there was nothing wrong with Pierce Deloughrey in the Clare goal and with the game in the balance, it wouldn't be like Colm Collins to make a change just for the sake of it.

But this wasn’t that. Well, it was, sort of, if you looked at it a certain way. Strictly speaking, there was no tactical benefit to changing goalkeepers at that point in the game. There hardly ever is. So sending Hayes in had to be about more than met the eye.

Here’s what it was. You’re a Clare footballer. For over a decade. You joined the panel shortly after the last time Clare played in Croke Park. The only reason you’ve had for visiting it since was to sit in the crowd and shout for the hurlers.

You’ve been out with a hip injury that you thought for a while might never heal up. You’re 32 years old with three kids at home. There’s no telling when or if Clare or you will see the inside of the place again.

So, yeah, the manager throws you the last 12 minutes. What about it?

“He never said he was going to do it or anything,” says Hayes. “He just called me down from the stand. It was probably down to the fact that I’d been around so long and he wanted to give me a run in Croke Park. I really appreciated it at the time because I didn’t know if I would ever be back there.

Last appearance

“Thankfully, we’ve been back since. I played a full 70 in the league final this year and hopefully will again on Sunday. But at the time, it could easily have been the first and last appearance I was ever going to make there.”

The majority of GAA careers are written in invisible ink. We gloss over and we move on and so guys like Joe Hayes pass through leaving pristine sand behind them. But of course they have their yarns too.

He grew up in Lissycasey, a football Gaza in a hurling land. His dad is Seamus Hayes of the Clare Champion – he saw the won't-be-a-cow-milked Munster final of 1992 from the press box of the Gaelic Grounds. A 10-year-old with a Clare flag in his paw usually wouldn't get much of a welcome in that environment but that was a different sort of day.

"After the game, we were walking down the old Davin Arms – I think it's a Lidl now, or an Aldi – and we met Martin Daly who was a club-mate of ours. He was only 18 years of age. You were just talking away with someone who was after beating Kerry in a Munster final. So that was it, the first Clare football match I was ever at. Football was it from then on."

He went to St Flannan’s and played in two Munster finals. Just not the sort of Munster finals that gets you a name.

“I played hurling alright but I wasn’t next nor near good enough. In Flannan’s, if you were on the Harty team, you were a god. I was nowhere near that level. I probably went out for the trials alright to get out of class but I was at nothing. But we had a good football team and we got to two Munster colleges finals. Lost both of them to Tralee.”

When he was in fourth year, he got picked for the Clare under-16s. They played a quasi-Munster competition in which Kerry gave them a hiding but he had a decent game in goals. Next thing you know, he got picked for Munster in a couple of trial games for the first ever under-17 International Rules trip to Australia. Munster won, Hayes found himself on the plane.

“We were only kids, away down to Australia for a month. It was an unbelievable time. We got hammered altogether in three games but that was nearly to be expected. They were all big prospects who were using these games to get drafted and go after professional contracts, whereas we were half on holiday.

“So we were well beaten. It was the first time it was ever done and we were way off the mark physically. But it was some trip to be on and we had some top players in the squad. The likes of Conor Mortimer, Seamus Scanlon and these guys went on to have top-class careers.”

That was 1999. Between one thing and another though, it was 2005 before he played senior for Clare. He got lost, they got lost, nobody put a big pile of energy into the search. He was in for a while with the panel in 2001 under Pat Begley but didn't make the cut for the summer panel and didn't get the call when John Kennedy came in the following winter. He went to college in Waterford and, having no particular reason to spare the horses, didn't.

There comes a time though. Playing for Clare was a trinket sitting up there on the shelf and he had a fair idea that if he put his mind to it he could reach out and grab it. By 2005, he found his way back and soon enough the number one jersey was his. Has been most of the time since.

It’s a back-alley world, just the same. When you’re kicking football for Clare, you’re putting nobody out. Nobody’s day is ruined if you lose a game. Nobody will boo you off the pitch. These are not necessarily good things.

“We played Kilkenny in a league game one year, I’d say it was 2009. I counted the people in the stand in Cusack Park during the game and there was 12 at it. Twelve. That was just what it was, you know? I wouldn’t have blamed Clare people for not paying the €15 to get in anyway. They were right not to. That’s where we were.”

Year by year, they fulfilled the fixtures as duty demanded. Springtime meant trips to Fraher Field, Ruislip, Casement Park, Tipp town. Come the summer the only mystery would be which of Cork or Kerry played bouncer. They might win they odd qualifier game if the draw was kind. They might not, either.

“It was only one game most years. Since the qualifiers came in, not too many teams had worse records than us. It was probably a bit down to attitude. Like, in 2009 we lost a Munster semi-final against Limerick. Back then it was an open draw and ourselves, Limerick and Tipp all landed on the one side of the draw. We played Limerick to get into a Munster final and we lost.

“It became a bit of a shambles after that. We got drawn against Donegal and we went up there with 20 players. We had four subs and a sub goalkeeper. That’s not management’s fault – it was players who decided not to go. Management can’t put a gun to a fella’s head and say, ‘Look, you’re going up to Donegal.’

Worst thing

“And sure the worst thing was we went up and nearly won the game. Tubs [David Tubridy] had a goal disallowed near the end. They said he picked the ball off the ground in the last couple of minutes and we lost by three points. Donegal ended up going on a run to the quarter-final and they were beaten by Cork in the end. But that sort of thing wouldn’t have been in the thinking of people in Clare. Definitely in the last few years, the qualifiers have been embraced a lot more.”

Under Collins, the graph has been rising from the start. In 2014, they won two games before falling disastrously to Kildare – 0-12 to 0-6 ahead in the second half, they gave up the last seven points in a row to lose by one. They were promoted from the basement division as well that year and made the next jump this time around as Division Three champions.

Next year, they’ll play league games against the likes of Cork and Galway, Meath and Derry. Before that, they have a date with Kerry in the last eight of the All-Ireland. He hung in there a long time to see the world look like this.

“You would have had loads of people asking why you do it. I got it, plenty of the boys got it. The answer is what’s going to happen on Sunday. This is the answer. We wanted to see how good we could be and what was possible for Clare football. Now we’re going out in Croke Park in an All-Ireland quarter-final.

“Every time I went out, the goal was for Clare to be as good as they possibly could. If it was getting out of Division Four or if it was getting to a Munster final like we did in 2012, if that was as good as you could be, then so be it.

“A lot of years, it didn’t go well. You have to go through that too.”

Actually, you don’t have to. That’s the point.