After a whirlwind few weeks with the Dublin hurlers, one could forgive Brian Hayes some time to sit and take stock. But with Clare up next in the All-Ireland quarter-finals on Saturday evening, the challenges keep coming thick and fast. Hayes has been electrifying Dublin’s summer of hurling so far with his lightning-fast pace, in attack and defence, although like the rest of his team-mates, things slowly fell apart against Galway in the Leinster hurling final. They eventually lost 4-29 to 4-15.Saturday’s All-Ireland quarter-final reunites Dublin with a Clare team they faced twice during Division 1B of the league – losing 3-18 to 1-22 in Ennis, and again by 2-26 to 3-20 in the final in Limerick. Clare won’t be in any mood for shifting on those results.Still, Dublin do carry a psychological souvenir from this time last year, when they took out All-Ireland favourites Limerick in Croke Park. It was Dublin’s biggest championship win since 2013, when they won the Leinster title and went on to make the All-Ireland semi-final. “Disappointed that we didn’t take that chance, that we didn’t have the right energy and intensity on the day,” Hayes says of Dublin’s Leinster final performance. “We probably only hurled for about 15 minutes in all, to a good level. “We had chances to kick on. In particular at half-time, after the goal in the first half, and again after the penalty. So there’s a lot there for us to look at. That intensity piece, and just our energy, in and out of possession, both tracking men or runners, it probably just wasn’t there.”Hayes had produced the late rasper of a goal against Galway in the earlier rounds, his older brother Ronan also scoring a goal which brought Dublin right into contention. Dublin followed that up with a first championship win over Kilkenny since 2013, and their first on home soil since November 1941, and Hayes has good reason for believing that sort of form is still well within them.“There’s a lot of belief in our panel, we know how good we are. We know we have the type of performance like that in our locker. Limerick last year, Galway two years ago, Kilkenny this year, there’s evidence of that. We just need to really focus on those few things, get it right for Saturday.Brian Hayes of Dublin in action against Conor Hearne of Wexford. Photograph: James Lawlor/Inpho “I thought our energy on that day (against Limerick last year) and our work-rate was there in abundance, which you need against any good team. So we’ll be focusing on that going into Saturday.”[ Eddie Gibbons: ‘The Clare game is a good opportunity to put things right’Opens in new window ]Hayes was named PwC GAA/GPA Hurler of the Month for May for his efforts in getting Dublin to the Leinster final, the 23-year-old from Kilmacud Crokes in his third season on the senior panel. Unusually, he didn’t feature on the Dublin minor or under-20 teams, despite his abundance of natural speed. His pace was something Dublin manager Niall Ó Ceallacháin praised after the Kilkenny game. “He has that in him, he’s an athlete, but he can hurl too.”Former Irish 800m record holder David Matthews once observed that the combination of speed and endurance of his event was most suitable to the game of hurling, although for Hayes, it’s always been hurling.“I would only really have played hurling and football growing up,” he says. “Once I took a jump to senior, you kind of have to develop physically, so I had a good S&C programme with our club, which helped a lot. I’ve just kept working on it ever since. “I got that bit bigger as well, the speed probably came with that. And you have to have the hurling. You just can’t get away with not having it, especially at the level we’re playing. You need it. So that came along with the speed, I worked on that, and here we are.“Obviously Ronan (his older brother) would have played with most of those teams, won a Leinster minor, played on all the 20s panels, so I was always watching it and involved in it. I was hurling away with the club, so I was happy out, then just got the opportunity, and haven’t looked back since.”[ Years later, one comment is still that little pebble in the shoe of Dublin hurlingOpens in new window ]