A HURLER’S INTENSITY’S UNMATCHED
ALL-IRELAND winner Peter Duggan says the best hurlers never truly switch off as they strive to stay at the top.
The Clare star will return to club Championship action with Clooneyquin this Saturday – just 20 days after capturing the Maccarthy Cup.
In fact, just over a fortnight after beating Cork, he and Clare colleague David Fitzgerald braved the brutal conditions at Monday’s M Donnelly All-ireland Poc Fada final on the Cooley Peninsula (above). They’d already put in a week of club training so the time spent without a hurley in their hands after last month’s All-ireland triumph was brief.
Two-time All-ireland winner Duggan said he still savoured the ‘surreal’ Maccarthy Cup celebrations and insisted that’s just the way it is now if you want to stay at the summit.
Powerful Duggan said: “You’re never really off because if you take your mind off it, that’s it. You’ll fall down the pecking order fairly quickly so you never take your mind off it fully.
“You enjoy yourself, absolutely, and we’ll probably celebrate it all over the winter but at the same time you’re getting back into the reality of preparing yourself properly. Yeah, fellas are going out on a Saturday night maybe but you know you still have to do all the right things to get your body in good nick again.”
Duggan was quick to stress that he wasn’t complaining and that he’s happiest with a hurl in his hand.
The experienced attacker said he fully enjoyed the celebrations and revealed that he savoured them so much more than he did in 2013, when he was a teenager.
Duggan said of the latest Clare triumph: “It was surreal, everything we did for the week afterwards. Just going to the parishes, and you could ask any of the players, when you go to your own local parish it’s chilling stuff.
“There’s a few of us involved from Clooney-quin and we walked up from the bottom of the village all the way up to the top and there was a big cheer when we got up to Malachy’s Bar.
“Did I make sure to enjoy it? Oh 100 percent! That was the one thing we all said, that whatever happens we’ll embrace every single opportunity that comes out of this.”