{"id":534895,"date":"2026-07-05T23:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T23:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/534895\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T23:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T23:57:10","slug":"odonnell-on-clare-career-ive-loved-every-minute-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/534895\/","title":{"rendered":"O&#8217;Donnell on Clare career: I&#8217;ve loved every minute of it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An emotional Shane O&#8217;Donnell struggled to find the words to sum up his inter-county career as his days in the Clare jersey came to an agonising end with defeat to Limerick in their All-Ireland semi-final at Croke Park.<\/p>\n<p>The 2013 All-Ireland champion described it as an &#8220;honour&#8221; to represent his county and assured Banner fans everywhere that he &#8220;enjoyed every minute of it&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s been an honour to be able to wear the Clare jersey, and I&#8217;ve enjoyed every minute of it,&#8221; O&#8217;Donnell told the RT\u00c9 Sport panel after the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/sport\/hurling\/2026\/0705\/1581834-oconnor-goal-sees-limerick-snatch-victory-at-the-death\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Treaty County had pipped the Banner men late on in Headquarters<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But I&#8217;ve always had a somewhat trite response when people ask me about my career, that I&#8217;ll reflect on it when it&#8217;s done,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So I don&#8217;t have an answer for you right now, but maybe in, in time I&#8217;ll be able to look back on it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But yeah, I&#8217;ve loved every minute of it. The guys in the dressing room, every player I&#8217;ve ever played with in the Clare jersey, I&#8217;ve been proud to stand beside them.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They showed out there today, and I&#8217;m always proud wearing this jersey.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Clare pushed Limerick to the pin of their collar and almost pulled off an upset to reach the decider against Galway in two weeks&#8217; time.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Dublin , Ireland - 5 July 2026; Players tussle during the GAA Hurling All-Ireland Senior Championship semi-final match between Clare and Limerick at Croke Park in Dublin. (Photo By Piaras \u00d3 M\u00eddheach\/Sportsfile via Getty Images)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0024a4f9-614.jpg\"\/><br \/>\nClare and Limerick served up a predictably physical affair<\/p>\n<p>O&#8217;Donnell put Clare&#8217;s aggressive, front-foot performance partly down to smart tactics &#8211; but mostly down to attitude.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Obviously, you have to get the tactics right so that you have an opportunity to actually apply the pressure and apply the aggression,&#8221; the \u00c9ire \u00d3g Inis man explained.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But once you have the tactics, then it&#8217;s all about the kind of pressure you can apply on the ball and the work you can do and get off the shoulder and all those things. So that&#8217;s what the narrative has been all week.<\/p>\n<p>\u200a&#8221;So you know, tactical master classes and everything really are in a combination of the application and the actual tactics themselves.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We just wanted to be able to get in their face and be aggressive and make it a tough game and bring it down to a fight.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Clare led by five points at the break having dominated large parts of the opening 35 minutes. O&#8217;Donnell felt his team were right where they wanted to be hading into the second period.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were happy at half-time with where we were at, but wanted to push on and struggled to get a ball in our hands for the second half, especially to our puckouts, and [Limerick] just started to come back at us,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So yeah, that was disappointing. Obviously the result, extraordinarily disappointing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Those words do not sum up his career, but certainly his final day.<\/p>\n<p>Limerick v Clare full highlights<\/p>\n<p alt=\"Clare vs Limerick | GAA Highlights | RT\u00c9 Sport\" data-embed=\"comcast-player\" data-guid=\"epic-mpx-manual-34717\" data-id=\"rDaniSbBWX4y\" data-thumbnail=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/images\/0024a4ee-900.jpg\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An emotional Shane O&#8217;Donnell struggled to find the words to sum up his inter-county career as his days&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-534895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}