Go back along the west Clare village's main street to Tubridy’s Pub and it doesn’t take landlord Tommy Tubridy long to point out that Doonbeg FC was the first Clare team to win a Munster Club Championship.

You also soon find out that Doonbeg has won the Clare Senior Football Championships 18 times.

The talk indoors then is about glories on the sports fields and the recent lift in the weather. Enquiries about the arrival of the Trumps are greeted with more of a shrug than anything else.

Mr Tubridy said: “We like them. When they come, Eric — his son — pops in.

“He is just like everybody else and comes in and minds his own business and has a few pints with maybe a few friends he has with him. He’s very friendly and he gets on with people.” 

On the fact that Trump has been in business at the nearby golf club hotel and resort since 2014, he adds: “He is good for business and he is good for the local economy.

There are a lot of people employed at the resort. Things dropped off during Covid but they really bounced back last year, and it has been very busy ever since.

Rita, rather than be drawn too much on her views on Trump, also welcomes his visit because of the business aspect to it.

“Look,” she said. “Ireland does business with a lot of different countries. Look, for example, at Ireland’s exports to Russia. So, it is very easy to sneer at what happens here, in relation to Trump. But livelihoods depend on him.

“People were very hurt by what was said about us on social media the last time he came because so many people were supportive of him. But I have just chosen to ignore social media and since 2019 (when he last visited while president), most of us have realised that it is what our own community thinks of itself that is important.” 

A local triumph 

She also mentions something that not a lot people outside the close-knit west Cork community around Doonbeg might realise — the fact that while Trump is now synonymous with Doonbeg and the golfing resort, it only exists because it was conceived by a local community development board.

“The local community made this place happen, and Trump is the latest custodian of that,” she says.

“The community group went to Europe for the €2.4m that was needed to buy the land of the seven landowners, and the rest is history.

“The project has been handed from one set of investors and developers along the way.

He has actually hardly changed anything, maybe spruced things up a bit and definitely invested a lot in the golf course. But things are pretty much as they have always been.

In the hours before the former US president's arrival, apart from some armed gardaí manning a checkpoint, the estate could hardly be seen as a hive of activity.

Small teams of maintenance workers were casually tending to the grounds, as others set about erecting various sizes of Stars and Stripes flags on walls and the sides of various buildings.

There were also a handful of tourists playing golf at the resort.

The three helicopters  appear to have arrived in parked up in a field a few hundred metres away.

Locals don't like to be drawn on any of the controversies around Trump, his reputation as arguably one of the most divisive people in American politics, or the various charges he is fighting.

Michael Fitzpatrick, the manager of the Fitzpatrick’s Circle K filling station in the nearby village of Kilmihil, was pleased that one of the region's biggest employers was on his way.

“I think it’s great,” he said, before rumours started circulating that actually he might not even be coming after all. “It’s very easy for anybody not from around here to sneer at him but we take him at face value here.

We don’t look at the bigger picture because we don’t have to. We look at the fact that there are more than 300 jobs at that hotel and resort.

“Added to that, a lot of the local businesses benefit in one way or another. You also have to bear in mind, there are no other businesses giving the volume of employment that the hotel and resort is.

“I think it’s great that he has the business here, it’s great that he is coming, and he’s great for business and that’s all that counts.” 

Asked if he has ever met him or if he will meet him, he replied with a hearty laugh: “No, I don’t think I’ll be meeting him. I’m quite busy at the moment.

“As to whether or not I have met him? No, I’ve never met him but more importantly, he’s never met me!” 

At around 6pm yesterday word spread throughout the press corps and locals that Trump’s plane was just 20 minutes away from Shannon.

Suddenly rumours circulating earlier in the day that he wouldn’t be coming after all were forgotten.

In their place was talk that it was too blustery for him to take a helicopter and that he was planning to travel by road instead. 

The route to his club falls short of a trip into Doonbeg itself.

Were he to venture that far, he would see US flags adorning the odd lamppost here and there.

He would also see the small group of young supporters who had gathered across the road from the entrance to the club, with their huge Trump-branded Stars and Stripes flag.

It’s a far cry from the throngs of people who greeted his arrival in the area in 2019.

But then, a lot has happened since and then there is, of course, Sunday's game to think about.