Forward thinking O’Brien on revenge mission
Parades. Music. Jimmy Doyle.
John O’Brien, surely that’s a distraction? “I enjoy all that – when you’re coming along on the bus and you see all the crowds and so on, it’s something else to get you going. When you’re out training five nights a week, sometimes you’d wonder if anybody cares at all. It’s the big days that you play for and it’s a bonus for us that the game is in Thurles.
“It’s a long time since the cup was lifted in Thurles and the lads – even the younger ones – have their heads screwed on. I think the excitement will only add to the day.”
There you have it. Tipp have had two tough games to reach the final, and O’Brien feels they’ll stand to him and his colleagues.
“We didn’t get much credit for the Cork game because people were saying they hadn’t much work done, but you know that with Cork, a lot of those guys are very committed and wouldn’t be too much out of shape.
“I think Cork will improve as the year goes on, though, and I think we might get a bit more credit for that win later in the year.
“The same with Clare – they had nothing to lose that day. I know they had a bad league campaign but they came out and went at us.”
In both games, however, Tipp drifted out of it in the second half.
“We let both teams back into it but the other side of that is we came out with the win both days. You have to take the positives.
“It’s something we’ve to address as players rather than being a job for the management – when you’re out on the field and somebody needs to take the game by the scruff of the neck then somebody has to do that. Having said that, for a few years we were in tight games and we’d lose them by a point or two. We’re winning these, even if we’re leaving it probably a bit late for the sake of the spectators’ hearts.
“It’s in our heads for the next day that if a team gets a run on us, though, not to leave it to someone else but to take it on ourselves individually to do something about it.”
Part of that something is fitness; part of it is youth.
“Our fitness is a big help – I think it’s at a whole new level compared to recent years, and Cian O’Neill, our trainer, has a lot to do with that.
“We also have 10 U-21s on the panel and they bring a whole new freshness to it. They’re not afraid of any team.”
Eamonn Corcoran, who soldiered for years with O’Brien on Tipp teams, says the affable Toomevara man is a help to those youngsters.
“He’s a very popular lad and fellas would get along with him – and look up to him. He was there in 2001 so he’s around a long time, though he’s still a youngster.
“He’s one of the most experienced fellas on the panel and in the last couple of years he’s put himself up there as a real leader on the team.
“For instance, I think we owe our Munster medals from last year to Johno. When we were under pressure in the final against Clare, he produced one of his trademark catches, threw a dummy and got a great goal.”
For his part, O’Brien spreads the credit around.
“The difference this year is that the movement is good, lads are filling the space well and they’re not crowding the area. That comes from playing with lads on a consistent basis and having a settled enough attack.
“Guys have come in like Noel McGrath and it’s like he’s there 10 years. You can make a run and he sees it straightaway, and that’s a big thing – we’re probably playing less as individuals than we have been and the ball is being used a lot better. When you want to win trophies, or tight games, you have to play more as a team.”
Sunday they face the outfit which caught them at the All-Ireland semi-final stage last year.
O’Brien is honest about his side’s motivation.
“We’ll be keen to make up for that, there is no point saying we won’t. We’d be putting our all into a Munster final anyway, no matter who’d be playing, and the fact that Waterford are there means there’s an added incentive – they’re one of the only teams to have beaten us in the last few years.
“You’d want to rectify that. Up to the semi-final things were going well, but in Croke Park we were probably a bit naive at times in that game. Even though we could have won it, Waterford probably deserved it on the day.
“It would have been nice to play badly and win, and for us it was probably the first time that year we played badly and didn’t win; this year it’s been different in that we didn’t play that well against Clare but we still got through.”
It’s a far cry from 2006, when O’Brien was in a serious car crash in Limerick. He missed out on a crucial club fixture but it could have been much worse.
“I was very positive at the time. The club were in an All-Ireland club semi-final at the time and I was rightly annoyed over missing that, not to mind the months afterwards.
“I had good people around me. I had a good doctor and my brother Paddy is a physio, he looked after me well and still does. You hear different things about injuries but at the time I didn’t hear any of the bad stories, so it’s only now that I realise how lucky I was.”
That reference to his club isn’t a coincidence. O’Brien has been a Toomevara cornerstone for years.
“When you’re playing with Toome you’re playing with top-class guys, Tommy Dunne, Benny Dunne, my brother Paddy – there’re always a good few lads who played intercounty hurling, so the standard is very good.
“But when you go into intercounty it is a big step, particularly the fitness demands. You’re in a more competitive environment – in club hurling you can cruise through some games, but at county level you just have to go for every ball as if it’s the last minute.”
One of those clubmates pays tribute to him. “He’s been central to our success over the years in county championships,” says Tipp and Toome legend Tommy Dunne. “We certainly felt his loss when Ballyhale beat us in that semi-final; we never felt it more than that day.
“He’s picked up more than one man-of-the-match award in county finals in Tipp. He’s one of these guys who plays well on the big day.”
Eamonn Corcoran pays tribute to O’Brien’s versatility with club and county.
“Watching him down the years with Toomevara he scored a lot of goals in at full-forward,” says Corcoran. “The last day he got another goal at full-forward against Clare the last day, though before that he was out in the half-forwards for 20 minutes and I thought he was head and shoulders above everyone, he was that good.
“When he’s on that form there’s not a back in the country would mind him – he’s all over the field, and the wing-back doesn’t know whether to go with him or stay put. I know that last year in training sessions it didn’t do my confidence much good to be marking him, he was just on fire.”
Tommy Dunne reinforces that impression of a star half-forward: “In club hurling he did a lot of damage there for us. In 2006, when we played Nenagh in the county final – a great, open game of hurling – he did a lot of damage out on the wing.
“He won ball from puck-outs and opened up the Nenagh defence with a dummy handpass before burying the ball in the corner of the net. That was the turning point of the game for us that day, and he’s done it for Toome countless times.
“But Eamonn is right, he’s versatile – he can play in the inside line as well. With Tipp at the start of his career he was probably seen as a corner-forward, but he adapted his game to play out the field for us and Toome. You can’t tie him down to one position because he has the ability to play in several different places.”
We’re getting to the point in an interview when the subject traditionally talks up the opposition . . .
“It’s easy to talk them up,” says O’Brien. “Waterford have won a lot of Munster finals, and the thought of us being red-hot favourites against them in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final is gas now.
“They’ve been in so many big games, they won’t fear Tipperary. They make no bones about that, the fact that they don’t fear us, and they haven’t lost to us too often.
“I know they’re missing Ken McGrath but Dan Shanahan will slot in and he’s due a big one. John Mullane is flying as well. But we’re quietly confident, if we can perform to our top level, which we didn’t in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final, we should be very hard to beat.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
