Kieran Shannon: Paul Flanagan will remain a hidden presence and influence even in retirement

“If you asked my teammates last year they would have said that I would have found it a bit of a push to go back for 2024,” he says.

“When I did go back I was fully in and really went at the season. But there just comes a point when you’re ready to take another challenge. I was very happy to step away.”

He does so at 32, having won not just once but twice almost everything there is to win in the inter-county game: two senior All Irelands, two U21 All Irelands, two Munster minor championships, two national leagues: only a senior Munster medal eluded him.

But you can’t reduce his career with Clare to just those numbers. There’s a quote he’s fond of, one he first came across from his staff room conversations in Ard Scoil Rís with Martin McPhail, the former Munster and Connacht rugby player: What really counts can rarely be counted.

“So much, everything, was poured into all those years. All the daily sessions, the relationships. How can you measure them?”

Example. The first time Flanagan walked into a Clare setup, Cathal Malone likewise made that first, tentative, giddy step.

Jimmy Browne from Broadford was over that 2006 Tony Forristal U14 team. Tony Griffin, Flanagan’s clubmate, also went down to Waterford with them for the day, it being the year he took out from college in Canada to win his All Star, while to fully ensure they weren’t lacking anything in the inspirational stakes Browne also enlisted the oratorical services of the county goalkeeper at the time, one Davy Fitzgerald.

“For a 14-year-old,” laughs Flanagan at the memory, “it was full on!” Flanagan and Malone were the only two members of the 2006 U14s that went on to play senior hurling championship for Clare.

Yet 18 years later not only were the two of them still sharing a Clare dressing room, but the Friday week after their All Ireland final win over Cork, Malone was groomsman at Flanagan’s wedding.

At first it seemed to come easy: the winning. The county’s rush of silverware in a way began with Flanagan: in 2010 he captained the county to its first Munster minor title in 21 years. Three years later he was again the captain for the U21s that put back-to-back All Irelands together. A week on from that he was a sub on the senior panel that brought home Liam McCarthy.

The problem was for almost a decade that’s all he remained: a sub. From 2012 to 2019 there wasn’t a year he wasn’t on the panel and yet not a year that he started a championship game. He was in that no man’s land: too good not to be part of the best 35 players in the county, not going good enough to be entrusted with a championship start.

“Even when the club were winning counties, you knew there was more in you but you just weren’t hurling with as much freedom. It was as if I had nearly lost the way to know how to do it.

“Myself and Jack [Browne] and Tony [Kelly] were only talking about this the other day about what’s the hardest thing in sport. And we were saying that, yeah, injury is probably the hardest part, having all been through it, but the next hardest thing is not playing. Not getting the kick to bring yourself back up or not be provided with enough feedback. You’re just there.

“There were a lot of shitty nights coming back in from UL or Caherlohan and you wouldn’t have been on much ball and feeling you just weren’t getting out of it as much as you were putting in. But I always felt I had to keep plugging. I couldn’t just leave it either and say I was done and go away and do something else. It was probably the easiest option but I just couldn’t do that.”

He took a short break at the end of 2019; Sarah and himself went travelling around Asia and Australia for four months. No sooner were they home when Covid arrived. Flanagan used the early lockdown to put into action some of the gym programmes designed by Adrian O’Brien who he knew from training teams in Ard Scoil.

Then when you were allowed to finally meet people in small pods, he teamed up with Tony Kelly down in the club field.

“Tony is unbelievable. We might be looking to do a tempo run or longer run and he’ll walk it out: down to the 45 with the cone with him: He’s thinking that far ahead of what he’ll want to do in the session and get a good buzz out of completing it.

"And I was there with him constantly during Covid and we just fed off each other. Getting better physically gave me an awful lot of confidence and he came back in great nick as well.

“When Brian asked me back after the club campaign, I went in that winter and could see, ‘Yeah, I feel good here.’”

By then he was studying for a masters in mental health, mental skills and performance psychology in UL. Primarily he did it to help him help others but early on he was his own best client.

He learned to more constructively reframe and review his performances in training and games. In taking classes on skill acquisition he learned the value of cueing skills.

“Up to then if you passed me the ball I would always receive it flatfooted. But what I learned was if I stayed on the balls of my feet, if I was on the move, I was giving you the cue to give it to me and I’d be more comfortable getting it.”

It all added up. In 2020 he got his first start in championship. In 2021 he was an ever-present on the team. In 2022 he was an All Star nomination, entrusted with marking TJ Reid in Croke Park.

And then after the first round of the 2023 championship he never started for Clare in championship again. Tipp came to Ennis and plundered Clare for five goals.

“We had a meeting the next week in Clareabbey and after it Brian called me into the hallway and aid, ‘Look, you’re out for next Saturday.’ And I said, ‘Fair enough.’ What could I say?

“That winter we had a long campaign with Ballyea, getting to the Munster final. In hindsight it was tough getting back up to the full pitch of it. And then a couple of weeks out from championship Sarah broke her leg. So it was full on there, just in and out of hospital, and worrying about her and all that. So my energy probably wasn’t where it needed to be and in the second half I made a couple of errors.”

His demotion was that sudden, that brutal, yet he didn’t sulk. He had too much respect for Lohan and the group to do that and the way he responded and carried himself wasn’t lost on them either: they still wanted him back and around the place for 2024.

All summer behind closed doors he marked Shane O’Donnell in A vs B games. Andy Moran has credited Chris Barrett, a fringe and nationally-unknown Mayo player back in 2011, for helping him win his first All Star that year; their private battles steeled him for more visible wars in Croke Park.

Flanagan won’t and can’t say if he similarly helped O’Donnell win his imminent Hurler of the Year, only that if it did it was just a by-product of his own primary and primal goal to try to break back onto the team.

“I actually loved every one of those [in-house games]. You’d be going into them, ‘Right, I’m ready for this.’ It gave me a reference point again; in 2022 I’d have been marking a big player and here I was taking on a big player again. So something like that would spur me on again.

“You have to put value in your play. And your teammates will be able to see and tell if you are. So while I would have wanted to see more of that on the pitch on game-day, I’m really grateful that I got that opportunity: that the value of my play was seen by teammates on a Tuesday and Friday.”

He’ll remain a hidden presence and influence. He is now working extensively as a performance coach with underage Clare hurling and Kerry football teams, and the Munster rugby academy.

Because they know when he talks about attitude, he walked it too.