Keeping it all in perspective
He meandered over for a chat, starting by showering praise on the big youngster in the Barcelona top, and ending with a sweeping dismissal of an entire county.
“Ah no,” said Aisake O hAilpín, “Tipperary are a good team. They’ll be back.”
A final handshake and the chatty pensioner departed.
After a ten-points win over the old enemy, the Cork full-forward had to be getting used to the praise, you venture.
“Look, the same fella could have been sledging me last week, one of the people saying ‘ah, he shouldn’t be starting, he’s no good’, that kind of thing,” said O hAilpín.
“I know well who my friends are and who my enemies are. That just gives me motivation.
“What I wouldn’t like is people getting carried away and thinking we’ve the job finished – we’ve nothing won. We just won a game, that’s all. The pitch invasion after the game... that was enjoyable, I was glad people got a kick out of it, but we were back at training two days later. You’d enjoy the win for the night, maybe into the following day, but then it’s gone – it’s history.”
Still, history is what makes a Cork-Tipperary game take on the proportions it does, and O hAilpín concedes as much.
“A game against Tipperary is probably one of the biggest games you can play for Cork. It was like an All-Ireland final for us, that was the way we were looking at it – and that’s the way we’re going to treat every game from now on.
“There’s no point in not driving on from now. Limerick will be underdogs, they’ll have their backs to the wall and they have a point to prove. We have to go out with the same attitude we had against Tipp – the same hunger that we showed that time. Otherwise we’re wasting our time.”
After the win over Tipperary Cork manager Denis Walsh said he’d warned his players at half-time to treat the second half as a new beginning and to start from scratch. The right approach, says the forward.
“Denis was dead right. A few times last year – and this year – we started well and faded out of it, so a lot of our good work early on was undone later in a game. It was important against Tipp, even though we were ahead at half-time, to bring it back to nil-all, if you like, in our minds.”
They also had some pertinent advice from a famous face ringing in their ears from the previous weekend.
“Donncha O’Callaghan was brilliant when he came in the week beforehand to talk to us.
“He made one great point, that we should concentrate on ourselves, on us, not on other teams – that we should focus on our own strengths. Obviously it’s good to know the strengths of others, but you must know your own teammates inside out – if everyone looks after their own patch you’re alright.”
After plenty of loose criticism following the league final, O hAilpín must have taken some satisfaction from his man of the match performance.
“I know people would have been saying I was under pressure before the game, that I had to do better than the league final. But to be honest, I don’t pay much attention to what people say. There might have been people saying that I shouldn’t have started and so on, but I felt myself I’d be good enough, and Denis and the backroom staff gave me the opportunity. I gave it 100% and it worked out for me, thank God.”
So did some last-minute advice...
“Dr Con (Murphy) said it to me before the game – ‘don’t forget you can kick the ball’ – and I said ‘no worries’, but that’s what I was trying to do for the penalty, I knew I was close to goal. In fairness we got the penalty out of it, and Hoggy stitched it. It was a great strike.”
The years in Carlton helped to harden O hAilpín’s self-belief, though he wasn’t happy leaving his brother Setanta behind to plough a lone furrow in Australia. Still, they keep in touch.
“Yeah, he was watching in Australia in the middle of the night. He’d love nothing more than to be out there with us.
“I speak to Setanta two or three times a week, and he knew the story before the game. So did Seán Óg. Everyone has their own opinions. They’re welcome to that. I knew if I did the hard work and got a break or two in the game that it’d go well.
“It’s only one game, it’s not a season. If I could look back at the end of the year and say I’d played well in a couple of games I’d be delighted. It’s a work in progress – I’ve taken a step and I just want to keep going.
“Look, there are probably people with bad stuff to say about the Tipp game, but let them. It was a great team performance, that’s the important thing – the whole team played well. So did the subs. Michael (Cussen) did very well when he came on, but I knew he would, he’s a fine player.
“Everybody will be pushing for a place against Limerick – a new game and a new challenge.”
Cork will be overwhelming favourites against Limerick, but O hAilpín says the men in red are simply concentrating on getting their own game right.
“There are going to be matches when we don’t play as well as we did against Tipp, but we know that.
“We have the ingredients. It’s just a matter of putting it together. No matter who we play, we have to do it in the first half and the second half. It’s all about the whole game. Limerick are going to be very tough – they can hurl, they’re strong – and I can tell you that Waterford, Clare, Galway, Kilkenny, no other county and no other game exist for us.
“It’s all about the game against Limerick and we’re not looking beyond that.”
The old gent who’d gone through the lobby earlier had obviously raised the alarm; more and more faces were appearing around the corner, trying to spot O hAilpín. Time to get moving, but not before a final point.
“I’ll be honest, I’m hungry to win something, and I’d say a lot of the lads are the same. All I have to show is a county championship medal from 2004 with Na Piarsaigh.
“The winning feeling is unbelievable, and once you’ve experienced it you want more of it, but to experience it again you have to put in the work. And that’s what we’re doing, putting in the work.”
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