Shane O'Donnell weighing up his Clare future after rollercoaster year

​By Paul Keane

The way Shane O'Donnell interpreted it, from the conversations he had and the general vibes after Clare's 2024 All-Ireland win, the older crew were going to give it one last season in 2025 and then retire.

Now he's not so sure. Certainly David McInerney didn't give the impression that he was a player on the brink of calling it quits before Clare's last Munster round robin game against Limerick.

"Obviously we were out at that stage and it was the Tuesday training and we'd kind of just wrapped up a session," recalled O'Donnell. "I kind of turned to Davie Mac and just said, 'That's our last Tuesday session ever'. He just looked at me, and I was under the impression he was going to be leaving, but he just turned to me and was like, 'nah', basically."

Clare beat Limerick afterwards but still didn't advance to the All-Ireland series, drawing a line under a disappointing season. Of their 10 Allianz League and Championship games, they won just two.

Their All-Ireland title defence didn't go as planned and that may not be a note that two-time MacCarthy Cup winners like O'Donnell, McInerney, Tony Kelly, Seadna Morey, John Conlon and Peter Duggan wish to bow out upon.

Rewind back to last autumn and winter, after the All-Ireland win, and the thinking was a little different, according to reigning Hurler of the Year O'Donnell.

"We kind of just said that this year was probably going to be our last year," said O'Donnell at the launch of Bord Gais Energy's new solar campaign. "A lot of us actually explicitly had plans to leave (after 2025) and weren't going to be available for the year after.

"It wasn't one isolated conversation, or it wasn't a one-to-one chat. It was kind of, I wouldn't say it was an agreement but it was...yeah, that was definitely kind of the path we were going to go, which has changed slightly."

Clare supporters will be hopeful that their generational players give it another shot in 2026.

They will have been grateful too that O'Donnell was simply in a position to perform in this year's Championship.

He was told in January that a serious shoulder injury would require six months away from the game to recover but he somehow made it back to play against Tipperary on May 10.

"The noise when I came on, it was a great memory," said O'Donnell. "But looking back on it, it's obviously tarnished with the result of the game. If anything, I actually just think about that result and think that it would have been one of the great days of my career, coming back and everything and getting back on the pitch, if we'd won. But now I don't want to think about it, because we didn't win. And it essentially torpedoed our campaign."

The 31-year-old is confident about the long-term health of his shoulder. And when he returns from a holiday in Malta he will laser in again on club duty with Eire Og in Ennis.

He doesn't pause, or take time to think, either when asked if he'd have fast tracked his recovery and put himself through such a tough few months if he'd known how short Clare's Championship campaign was going to be.

"Even with that information I had in late January, I would have done the same thing," he maintained. "There was no way I could have played (with the injury), so it was basically, it was probably a retirement decision then. Would I retire with this injury or would I get it done and try to chase back?

"So that decision was relatively easy. At the end of the day, I just wasn't willing to hang up my boots on the back of an injury like that."

O'Donnell is certain too that whenever he does retire, or any of the other senior players for that matter, Clare will continue to operate at a high level.

"That part I would be less concerned about," said the PhD graduate. "We have obviously talked about that. I think any player wants to leave the team in a place that (is healthy). But I'm not concerned about that, actually, to be honest.

"There's so many young lads that we're seeing coming through with brilliant talent and I think there'll be enough players who have been exposed to the last few years of somewhat success, and then obviously the success last year, where we're competing at the top level.

"They've seen what it takes. We've probably had three or four years of that now, so there's a lot of players that have been exposed to that. So I don't personally feel in any way concerned that a few of us will rotate out and that there will be a Clare drop off at all. I just don't see that being a problem at all."