Niall O’Farrell, Seán Rynne and Diarmuid Stritch were all on a Clare minor team that lost by 40 points, but they bounced back in styleClare's Diarmuid Stritch in action against Conor Burke of Dublin at the Gaelic Grounds, Limerick. Photograph: Tom O’Hanlon/INPHO Sun Jul 05 2026 - 06:00 • 6 MIN READMichael Jordan has a lot to answer for. Take one decent(ish) sports documentary, multiply it by the Covid lockdown, then plug it into every other sport you can think of. Just like that, any team with a few lads over 30 automatically gets sprinkled with Last Dance energy.This weekend, it’s Clare’s turn. You have your John Conlons (37), your David McInerneys and Cathal Malones (both 33), your Tony Kellys and your Shane O’Donnells and your Peter Duggans (all 32). They land into Croke Park on Sunday against Limerick, all but ready for the free travel pass. One last dance before the nursing home.But look a little closer and that’s not what Clare’s season has been about. Not entirely, at any rate. Instead, and probably for the first time since the Kelly-O’Donnell-Duggan generation came through in 2013, it’s the players freshest on the scene who have given Clare hurling its pulse.Three in particular have made the summer their own. Niall O’Farrell, Seán Rynne and Diarmuid Stritch are different types of hurlers but they share some of the same traits. Pure strikers of the ball, strong and athletic in contact, quick over the ground. Above all, resilient in the face of adversity, a characteristic they’ve had to develop the hard way.All three were part of a Clare minor team who lost an infamous Munster quarter-final to Cork by 40 points in 2021. They were on the pitch in Thurles for every minute that night as Clare fell to a 6-28 to 0-6 annihilation, a ruthless Cork team never easing up, their players exhorting each other to ram home their advantage throughout. Stritch was 16 at the time, O’Farrell and Rynne were 17. The second Covid championship, Munster was straight knock-out. One and done.“It shows the resilience of those lads,” says Derek Larkin, who managed O’Farrell and Stritch at Ardscoil Rís. “Taking a hiding like that at that age, that’s a lot to come back from.”The worst thing about a 40-point beating at intercounty level is that you don’t get away with it quietly. People who wouldn’t have even known the Clare minors were playing that night got to hear about it. The online world in which teenage boys live was predictably merciless in the days that followed. Some of it was downright nasty.Seán Rynne's talent was obvious early on. Photograph: Natasha Barton/INPHO Yet within nine months, all three had brushed it off to be cornerstones of historic achievements at schools level. Rynne, who captained Clare against Cork, led St Joseph’s of Tulla to the only Harty Cup in their history the following February. O’Farrell and Stritch were on the other side in that Harty final playing for Ardscoil Rís but defeat didn’t mean they were out. They ended up winning the Croke Cup the following month, also the only time their school has won it in 82 years of trying.“Shane O’Brien would have been our main forward at the time,” says Larkin. “It’s funny, that was the last time Niall and Diarmuid would have played in Croke Park and now they’re going to be playing there against Shane on Sunday. But even though Shane got man of the match in the final against St Kieran’s, Niall was extraordinary in that game.“He actually got injured in the semi-final and put himself through a huge amount of work in the weeks leading up to the final to get himself right for it. And he missed a penalty in the first half but he didn’t let it faze him. He finished the game with eight points, three of them in a row just before half-time. He’s such a dependable guy, very single-minded.”Of the three, Rynne was earmarked from early on. Even as a coltish 17- and 18-year-old, he had obvious size and physical prowess. He was in with the Clare under-20s in his first year out of minor and had graduated to the fringes of Brian Lohan’s senior panel when he was still only 19. When Clare played Limerick in the 2023 Munster under-20 championship, Rynne was given the job of playing on Adam English, even though he still had a year to go at that level. O’Farrell’s route was altogether more scenic. His ability was never in question – he was the free-taker in most teams he played on and his touch and strike were generally unimpeachable. But physically he wasn’t as developed as his contemporaries. He would drift out of games the longer they went on and his scoring tended to drop off noticeably in the last 10 minutes when it was needed most.So while a player like Rynne was fast-tracked into the senior set-up ahead of time, O’Farrell wasn’t called in until last year. Lohan has made a point throughout his reign of giving the best under-20s a go but O’Farrell needed a year of building himself up physically before he was considered. Nobody told him to do it, he set about it himself. A stellar club campaign for Broadford meant he couldn’t be ignored any longer.Niall O'Farrell with fans after clash with Dublin in Semple Stadium on June 20th, 2026. Photograph: Tom O'Hanlon/INPHO Interestingly, he has ended up in defence despite playing his whole underage career as a forward. Injuries during the league left Lohan short on the left side of his defence so O’Farrell played there against Wexford and held his place for the championship. He got a bit of a chasing at centre-back against Limerick – neither the first nor the last to be condemned to such a fate. But he has endured all the same.As for Stritch, it isn’t just the flowing locks that make him a Gen Z version of Shane O’Donnell. He has a big brain too – he got full points in his Leaving Certificate. But more to the point, he has an X-factor about his hurling that the Clare public have fastened on to this summer. His breakout display against Tipperary was irresistible, zinging points from all angles and distances.Stritch is a year younger than the other two and was a sub on that Ardscoil Rís team in 2022. But his size and his hurling always marked him out – Larkin remembers him playing Dean Ryan and Harty hurling when he was still only in transition year.“He’s so athletic and a very intelligent hurler,” Larkin says. “He can make something out of nothing. He brings that electricity to the team – everyone tunes in when he’s on the ball. He can spot a break and he’s on it in a flash. And because he’s such a great stickman, he can really hurt teams.”When that ill-fated Clare minor team got to under-20, they were always going to have to play Cork again. They faced them twice in fact, running them to six and four points. The Munster semi-final was a desperately close game – Stritch had been carrying an injury most of the year but came off the bench to score 2-1. But Cork chinned them on the line, scoring 1-3 in the dying minutes. Losing like that stung but at least Clare were able to chisel away at the memory of the 40-point beating three years earlier. Clare beat Limerick, Waterford and eventual All-Ireland winners Tipperary in that championship, providing some signs of a long-overdue turnaround at underage level.That’s been the great unspoken truth of Clare hurling for most of the past decade. The bookend All-Irelands of 2013 and 2024 slightly obscured the fact that they’d been getting wiped at underage level. They won three under-21 All-Irelands in a row between 2012 and 2014 but went seven years without so much as reaching a Munster final after 2015. They went 12 years from 2011 to 2023 without a Munster minor title.[ ‘They need to do something’: Shane O’Donnell calls for rule change on head-high tacklesOpens in new window ]Slowly, gradually, they turned it around. The 2023 crop won Clare’s first minor All-Ireland since 1997 – and only the county’s second ever. That group graduated this year to win the under-20 All-Ireland, Clare’s first since 2014. Those under-20s will come in time but the first models off the conveyor belt are the likes of Stritch, Rynne and O’Farrell. Whatever happens against Limerick, however long 2026 lasts, they’ve put down deposits this summer that will stand to them into the future. If this is the last dance for the Kelly-O’Donnell-Duggan generation, there is at least a sense in Clare that there is more coming behind.Not a minute too soon, either.IN THIS SECTION