Comeback Conor enjoying his journey back to the limelight

DON’T talk to Conor Gleeson about comebacks, second chances, re-inventing of self.

Gleeson was captain and midfielder for Tipperary in their nadir year of 1997, when they were beaten in both Munster and All-Ireland finals by Clare.

Though he went onto win National League titles with the Premier in 1999 and 2001, and a Munster championship in the latter, he failed to nail down his place in the squad. Not a happy time then?

“Are you going to start talking horror stories?” he asks, with the edge of a guy who’s had a bellyful of it. “It’s all well written at this stage, I could give you any amount of numbers and you can look it up. All I’ll say on that is that I’m down here in the Garda College in Templemore for the last two years and in a much better position to train, not tearing up and down from Dublin all the time.

“Things are going well for me on the hurling front.”

One of the reasons it’s going so well is that Conor, much like team-mate John Carroll, has been enjoying a change of scenery in the last couple of seasons, having migrated from defence and midfield duties to the attack.

It is little surprise really, given the 6 ft 3½ins, 15 muscle-laden stone, former Munster and All-Ireland-winning field athlete is a made-to-measure target-man for goalkeeper Brendan Cummins’ huge puck-outs.

This weekend he will line out on the edge of the square in the All-Ireland senior hurling semi-final against Kilkenny. But will he stay in that spot?

“I’m picked there anyway. I’ve been playing fairly well at full-forward in training, played a match against Antrim a few weeks ago, probably scored too much, so I’m down to play there now anyway and try and win the high ball.”

Mind you, it won’t be his first start there. In the last round, which was an easy enough win over Offaly, Conor was named at centre-forward but lined out at full. He didn’t do too badly, but even by his own admission, he didn’t set the world on fire either.

“I don’t know, I didn’t really enjoy the experience too much against Offaly. Playing the new ball, if it doesn’t come down on top of you, or straight at you, if it lands to one side at all, it’s gone. I’d prefer to be a bit further out the field, but sure, you’re happy to play wherever you’re picked.”

The philosophy of a man who’s been through the mill. Speaking of second chances, having lost to Clare in the first round of the Munster championship, Tipperary are so far making full use of their second bite of the cherry.

“Yeah, we were bitterly disappointed after that. We’d been going well in training all year and we enjoyed the fruits of that by getting to the League final. That was a terrible loss (5-14 to 5-13), we were very disappointed and dejected after that, we knew we had the game in the bag but we let it slip, and no better team than Kilkenny to take advantage. We only had one weekend of a break after that before we met Clare, and it wasn’t enough time to focus.”

Clare by comparison had never taken their eyes off Tipp.

“Oh no, they were totally focused. They hadn’t been involved in the latter stages of the League, so they were built up 100%. They played very well, might have beaten us anyway, even if we’d been at a 100%, but we definitely didn’t do ourselves justice on the day. Another couple of weeks, we’d have been better prepared. We had a good break after that, and it was needed, it took us a while to get back into the swing of things. We’re going okay now, and as long as all the injuries are cleared up for Sunday, we’ll be hoping to give it a right rattle against Kilkenny.”

Going by that League final (and regardless of what anyone says, it is a good indicator), Tipperary certainly have the hurling to stay with the All-Ireland champions.

“We did hurl well for long periods of that game and were probably unlucky to come out with a loss. But Kilkenny are Kilkenny, they have a lot of outstanding hurlers and they have this knack of being able to get the scores, especially the goals, when they most need them. Both of us will be trying to peak, but whoever wins will have to play very well. One way or the other, there won’t be much in it.”