Toomevara carry the weight of under-achievement
Reared with hurley and ball in hand, immersed in the strong and multi-storied local tradition, the pacey full-forward has already led his side to county and Munster honours in 2004.
This afternoon, at Cusack Park in Ennis, Toomevara face Galway champions Athenry in the All-Ireland Club semi-final, with a much-coveted place in the final on St Patrick’s Day at stake.
He is now just two hours away from making the short walk up the Hogan Stand steps in Croke Park to collect the ultimate club honour.
When he was first handed the honour of the captain’s armband a year ago, would such thoughts have entered his head? Would they hell.
With nine county senior championships won between 1992 and 2004, Toomevara have been the dominant force in Tipperary hurling for over a decade. A host of players went on to play with Tipp, with Tommy Dunne captaining the county to All-Ireland senior honours in 2001 and Paddy coming on as a sub. Universal acclaim then, respect for the Greyhounds and the green-and-gold? Far from it.
Toomevara, both inside and outside the county, have earned opprobrium, derision and even contempt.
The reason is simple. After winning those nine counties, Toomevara went on to repeatedly fail in Munster.
They won the provincial crown in 1993, following which they lost in the All-Ireland final to another Galway side, Sarsfields. In any circumstance there are those who are ever-ready to criticise, but even Paddy accepts that Toomevara have underachieved.
“When I won my first county senior I was only 18 and I thought this was going to happen every year. I’m 25 now, I have six counties won, but as regards Munster, we’ve always under-performed.
“It’s been very frustrating to see teams that beat us go on to win the All-Ireland. You tell yourself, ‘ah we’ll be back next year’, and we did give ourselves that chance, over and over again, to prove ourselves in Munster. Unfortunately we never managed to win it.”
In Tipperary, Toomevara felt almost invincible. In Munster, even a first-round game against Kerry champions Kilmoyley had them quaking.
“They’d run us close the previous year up in Thurles. They have a lot of good players - the Bricks, Christy Walsh and so on - so I was dreading that one.”
Playing with that fear, Toomevara annihilated Kilmoyley, went on to face a depleted Na Piarsaigh of Cork in the semi-final, shorn of the talented Ó hÁilpín brothers. The nerves again kicked in.
“I spoke to the lads a lot about that this year, but we’d failed at that hurdle so many times before. In all those years (in Munster) we got beaten in one other final, (Kilmallock in 94), but the rest of the time, it was the semi-final, even the quarter-final, so we were very anxious going into the Piarsaigh game.
“Once we got over it, the nerves seemed to go and we were hungry for it again. I know the manner in which we won the Munster final mightn’t have really reflected that, as we hit a lot of wides at the end. But the monkey was off our backs, big-time.”
They didn’t steal it against Mount Sion. In the final five minutes, had Toomevara (and O’Brien himself, who missed two) taken any of the five or six gilt-edged chances they scorned, there would have been no debate about the true merit of their win.
Speaking of merit, in the current campaign O’Brien reckons Toomevara have only scratched the surface of their true potential. “Our best hurling this year was in the county semi-final against Mullinahone. I’ve never seen the lads play with such aggression.
“We had it against Mount Sion as well, towards the end of the second half, completely on top, but the difference was that we were hitting wide after wide.”
To win this semi-final, Toomevara will have to repeat that level of performance, but for a whole hour.
“Everyone knows about Athenry in club hurling. The big thing for them is that they’ve already won a couple of All-Irelands, so the pressure is off them. You’d go to your grave with a lot of regrets if you hadn’t won a Munster title after winning so many counties. We’ve managed that now, so it’s on to the next step again.”
The next step, then the next step, and perhaps ultimately, those Hogan Stand steps. Not a bad incentive.
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