Clare v Cork: David Reidy on Cork's turnaround and his own battle to stay relevant
"Hopefully I can make sure that they can't leave my name off the team sheet," said the Banner's long-serving corner-forward
It has taken David Reidy 11 years to be able to advise Clare's young guns not to let this special time pass them by.
He was invited onto the senior county panel less than a couple of months after the Banner's 2013 All-Ireland final replay win against Sunday's opponents Cork.
As one of the under-21 stars who claimed their own All-Ireland success between the senior drawn final and the Shane O'Donnell game - the replay - Reidy was convinced that Clare were here to stay at the championship's top table.
READ MORE: Clare v Cork: Brian Lohan feared that Shane O'Donnell wouldn't return to play after concussion
READ MORE: Bloodied Shane O'Donnell didn't catch Brian Lohan's stirring half-time talk v Kilkenny
Yet this weekend marks the Éire Óg marksman's first ever All-Ireland final. "Clare won the second day, you get a call up six weeks later saying that you are coming on to a senior panel that are All-Ireland champions," smiled Reidy in the retelling.
"And with such a young team that it's only natural for a 19, 20-year-old to think, 'Jesus, this is going to last'. But you are very quickly brought down to earth that it's not that easy.
"There are eight or nine teams that are at such a high level that you have to keep improving - that if you stay static for a month, don't mind a year, you'll see that in the results straight away.
"As 19, 20-year-old, it is very different thinking to my mindset now at the moment. I was talking to a few of the young lads that came on to the panel this year and I was saying to them, 'don't get too used to this'.
"You have to enjoy the build up but there is only one real focus and that's Sunday at half three. Enjoy the build up and then put that out of your mind."
A day after Clare finally overcame All-Ireland semi-final bogey team Kilkenny to reach this decider, Reidy revelled in the feeling of sitting back to watch Cork's epic win over five in a row chasing Limerick.
The Banner beat Cork at Páirc Uí Chaoimh at the end of April but the lively forward doesn't see much relevance in that regarding the meeting ahead.
Clare, he points out, needed to win that day and he knows that Cork have changed, not just in terms of some personnel but also in terms of their structure.
"The way that they have come into their own and the way that they are playing tactically, physically, what they pose as a threat, has upped another couple of percent since the time we played them," Reidy said. "So we'll be focusing on one do-or-die game."
The Ennis man acknowledges that Clare have improved too, although it is the second half performance against Kilkenny they will be looking to replicate, not the first.
"I would consider the Cork turnaround completely different," said Reidy. "What they showed against Limerick was unbelievable. Some of the scores they were taking were unbelievable. So they're going to be a different animal than when we were playing them. Down in Cork there was only two points in it. You can only imagine that there's only going to be a point or two in it on Sunday."
It has been a turnaround of sorts for Reidy, too, this summer. He had played well in the early rounds of the round robin but wasn't selected to start in the Munster final.
Clare didn't perform against Limerick and he was back in for the All-Ireland quarter-final against Wexford, before retaining his place at left corner forward against Kilkenny. "If you don't start it's about proving the management wrong and showing them what you can do," he said.
"It's your resilience to come back onto the field after being dropped and show them what can be done. So that started in the quarter-final against Wexford and continue to up the levels going into the semi-final. Hopefully I can make sure that they can't leave my name off the team sheet."
That desire to fight back and go again is seen throughout a side that had lost three Munster finals and two All-Ireland semi-finals over the last three summers.
"It's to get after the performance," said Reidy. "It might be cliché, might not, but this group of players have always gone after it. Sometimes we didn’t get it, sometimes we did. As an individual then, how can you improve? Everyone wants to win, but how much do you want to win?
"What do you need to do to get to the next level? What do you need to do to rectify a weakness in your game? It's being able to pinpoint that weakness, understand how to go about improving it, no matter how big or small it is, going doing the work then. And try again."
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