GAA: Banner will be team of decade and end year of the Cat; CLARE HAVE DONE IT ALL BUT THEY WANT TO BE BEST OF THE NINETIES.

GER Loughnane was living the vida loca while Ricky Martin was still learning to speak English.

But, in his sixth year as entertainments officer in Clare, there is no sign of Loughnane tiring of the wild life.

Two All-Irelands, three Munster titles, more epic battles than the collected occupants of the Great Officers' Mess in the Sky. The Banner boss has made Clare the adrenalin capital of the country.

He has taken on the GAA hierarchy, used the radio airwaves more effectively than anybody since Lord Haw Haw and scrapped with those who have dared to question the integrity of his team. Loughnane is a latter day Jimmy Dean.

With one difference. As Sunday's Guinness Championship semi-final with Kilkenny approaches, there is little to suggest that sport's most colourful character is heading for a high-speed crash.

For all his antics and his willingness to confront any issue, there has never been a suggestion that the former Allstar is out of control. He is very much a rebel with a cause.

That cause? To establish Clare - a team, which before his arrival hadn't won an All-Ireland since 1914 - as the team of the decade.

Already they are sure to be the team that hurling fans will count as the most memorable of the 1990s. Loughnane's profile, the players' capacity to quell the wildest bush-fires, and the fanaticism of the fans, has sealed that title.

But Offaly and Kilkenny have lifted the Liam McCarthy Cup as often in the past ten years. The jury is still out. Only by completing the hat- trick can Clare make their verdict a unanimous one.

They are delving deep to make a persuasive argument. Already this summer they have to fight they way across the Somme, though Ypres and past Passendale. Tipp (twice), Cork and Galway (twice) would have any team on their knees and panting for breath.

Yet Loughnane has no worries about stamina. He treats suggestions that his team are tired as dismissively as an astronomer reacting to claims that this morning's eclipse is all a bit of a bore.

"I feel like I am starting all over with Clare. This summer has been like 1995 (when they won their first All-Ireland since the beginning of the Great War) all over again. It is like we are at the beginning of something again."

So what has changed? Principally the fact that the Banner didn't spend the winter months tackling assault courses.

Instead a team, which has traditionally trained like paratroopers on speed, got out the sun-loungers, put the feet-up, stocked up on the paperbacks and sipped a few cold cocktails by the pool-side.

Well, not quite. But for once the players were not driven like a horse trying to get its nose in front in a photo finish.

It might have cost them dearly the first day against Tipp but now Loughnane is convinced they are reaping the benefits of the early-season go-slow.

He says: "We feel unbelievably fresh. I said it before the drawn game against Galway and you said I was bluffing.

"But then look what happened in the replay. We were unbelievably light on our feet.

"We didn't do the hard work at the start of this year that we had done in training every other season. In comparison with previous years we actually took it easy. We had to.

"That is why we looked so sharp in the replay against Galway. It was only eight days after the drawn game but we had only done a couple of light sessions in between the matches. We were ready."

Clare seem to have spent the past four years in fifth gear. So many of their matches - Tipp and Galway this year, Waterford and Offaly in 1998, two games against Tipp in '97, Limerick in '96 - have been high-speed, helter-skelter foot-to-the-floor collisions.

It is not the Banner way to cruise in the 30 miles per hour zone. And on Sunday the pedal to the metal kings will send the rev-counter roaring into the red once more. They will have to against the Cats of Kilkenny.

Kilkenny have made a deeper imprint on this year's championship than a herd of overweight elephants trampling across a snow drift.

In two games they have rifled 11 goals - five against the Offaly defence which held Cork goal-less last Sunday. They breasted the tape in Leinster averaging nearly 40 points per game.

DJ Carey, Henry Shefflin and Charlie Carter could hardly have scored as regularly had they scrubbed up, stuck on their best glad-rags, splashed on the Old Spice and headed for Lisdoonvarna.

Even Loughnane accepts it as a moment of truth: "This is the real challenge, everyone knows that. It will be more difficult than anything we have faced.

"Kilkenny have been extremely impressive. Some of their hurling against Offaly was absolutely out of this world."

While the Cats' forward line is settled and feared, Clare's attack has had as many combinations as the Rubic Cube this summer.

Players appear, disappear, make cameo appearances, are selected but not played, sprung from retirement, utilised successfully as super-subs then returned to oblivion...

Anyone who thinks the Lotto jackpot is the hardest six numbers to predict has never focussed their crystal ball on Clare's attack.

Even Jamesie O'Connor the one player certain to play every game when fit, has been in and out because of an arm injury. Niall Gilligan and Alan Markham are the only other regulars.

"We believe in using fellas who are in form when they are in form. We have nine or ten, any of who can be used.

"Some people prepare to have a settled six, we are used to picking lads who are in form when the game comes along."

Loughnane, like the vida loca, has never been predictable.