Brian Lohan has taken aim at the Clare county board, claiming hurling people in the county are being “let down”.
The iconic former full-back, who lined out for the county from 1993-2006, has been critical of the board in the past, most notably in 2015 when he said an independent committee chaired by Ger Loughnane should be put in place to review the senior hurling set-up after a couple of poor seasons.
His former team-mate Davy Fitzgerald was Clare manager at the time and later wrote in his autobiography how he was annoyed at Lohan’s suggestion, which he also interpreted as a dig at his father, county secretary Pat Fitzgerald.
Since Fitzgerald stood down as manager after the 2016 campaign, Clare have contested successive Munster finals, losing both to Cork, and played in Croke Park for the first time in five years last year.
And while the team has made a decent start to this year’s Championship and are viewed as All-Ireland contenders, Lohan feels they could be doing things an awful lot better in Clare.
He said: “There’s great clubs, really good people involved at both club level and at county level.
“Sometimes I think they’re a bit let down by the county board.
“The county board needs to be more dynamic. Like, the county board’s business is big business now.
“There’s a lot of money involved in it and I think you have to have that level of professionalism within that structure to get the most out of… you know, to assist the teams and get the most out of the county teams.
“I don’t know if that’s there.”
Lohan has been a Fitzgibbon Cup winning manager with UL and would be viewed as a possible Clare boss one day.
But it appears unlikely that he will be putting his hand up to succeed current incumbents Gerry O’Connor and Donal Moloney whenever they step away.
“I haven’t really thought about it, not with the present county board,” he said.
The two-time All-Ireland winner was speaking at the launch of the Bord Gais Energy GAA Legends Tour Series at Croke Park, which he will take part in this year.
A Liverpool supporter, Lohan miss Tipperary’s visit to Ennis on Sunday as he will be in Madrid for the Champions League final, though he says he would have loved to have played in the current Championship format.
“All you wanted was matches. As an inter-county hurler, how many times are you going to play in front of a full house? That’s what you want, in a big game.
“If you can do that five times in a year, it’s an awful lot better than doing it once a year.
“So it would have been a great format. It also means generally the best team wins.
“You can be caught on a certain day. For example, you could say we were caught by Limerick in ’96 and we were gone for the year.
“If we got a chance to play them again, we could have beaten them.”
If you haven't already, be sure to like our Irish Mirror Sport and Irish Mirror GAA pages on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
