O’Connell keen to raise Banner again

MAKING the best of a bad lot — that was the mindset of Clare’s Brian O’Connell after a less than auspicious introduction to Munster SHC hurling several years ago.

And as the Banner face into a provincial semi-final against hot favourites Tipperary tomorrow, that’s still his attitude. First, there was that debut: “It was an unfortunate day, against Waterford down in Thurles. I got thrown in as a greenhorn and John Mullane gave me a roasting. You have to take the good from all your experiences and that’s what I try.”

He did that, very successfully, and today Brian O’Connell is recognised as one of Clare’s best players for the past several seasons, to such effect that he has again been named captain. But what positive can he draw from a winless League campaign, that resulted in their relegation to Division Two?

“We trained with only one date in mind, the 21st of June,” is his answer. “The league is over. People are just looking at results, and that’s probably where they’re basing their opinions. But anyone in Munster can beat anyone else, on any given day. So it’s surprising we’re being so badly written off.”

Clare’s league form wasn’t accurately reflected in their results, and they could have ended with three wins at least. But O’Connell wants to look forward, not back and in recent years Clare have given some outstanding displays come championship, not least in their last outing, a narrow loss to Cork in the All-Ireland quarter-final last year: “I know that was nearly a year ago now, and we’re not bringing any kind of form to this game, while Tipperary are coming off a narrow loss to Kilkenny in the NHL final followed by a win over Cork. But I still have confidence we can win, otherwise I wouldn’t be at it. We’ll have to be at our best, but it can be done.”

Does he really mean that? Can he really see Clare winning this, a game in which they are such underdogs?

Absolutely, he says, that’s why he trains so hard, that’s exactly the kind of scenario he plays out in his head during all those long, tedious, grinding hours. “I suppose that’s the kind of thing every sports psychologist is on about now, visualisation, putting yourself in imaginary situations so that when they actually happen, your mind thinks you’ve been there before, you can deal with it and you’re more likely to make the right decision.”

Situations like what, for example? “A bit of everything – competing for the ball, batting, catching, running on to a ball at pace and putting it over the bar; every aspect of the game, the things you’re doing all the time in training.” Sports psychology – two buzz words nowadays, around successful teams especially, but of course it’s been around forever. O’Connell has his own motivation methods: “I’ve opened the occasional book, read through a few chapters, put it back,” he explains, before telling us about a more modern approach – “Just watching clips from the Clare team of the 90’s on YouTube – and you’ll always get something from that era – still gets the hair standing up on the back of my neck and gets the adrenaline going. When we came home from those games as kids the first thing we did was go out onto the road and start hitting balls, playing our own matches, and we were Ollie and Jamsie (Baker and O’Connor, Clare stars of the 90’s) and the boys. It’s our responsibility now to get the current young generation doing the same thing – if we’re winning big matches, the kids will be back out on the roads of Clare.

A few years ago we got to two All-Ireland semi-finals in a row, and you’d see the kids then, going around in Clare jerseys – that’s something we have to try to revive.”