Still Cian to improve

THE memory still triggers a surge of electricity through Cian O’Neill.

His first meeting with Liam Sheedy face-to-face in the Abbey Court Hotel in Nenagh was only minutes old and it was already apparent he wasn’t so much being offered the job of training the Tipperary hurlers as being interviewed for it and that Sheedy was seeking not just expertise but something more elemental.

“Are you ambitious?” said Sheedy, looking O’Neill straight in the eye.