Browne always in fashion

Waterford veteran Tony Browne on helmets, hurleys and the Fitzgerald factor

THEY have an unusual style of showing respect in the Waterford dressing room.

Tony Browne can tell you. Before last month’s Munster semi-final, the younger players made a skit of repeatedly asking the 20-season warrior if he was nervous.

When the 38-year-old gets on the team bus now he does so with trepidation. For a couple of reasons. One of them being his fashion sense — or lack thereof in the eyes of his not-so experienced team-mates.

“I’d be coming onto it wearing whatever I’m wearing and the younger lads would be laughing at me. With the modern game, younger lads are into their clothes and their haircuts so you’d obviously notice it and at times you’d try and keep in with them. You might have a nice top on you but then they’d only laugh at you.”

Then there’s the helmet in his arm. The trusty piece of equipment he’s had since he can remember: “They take the mickey out of me for that too. I won’t even throw it into the bag going to matches, I’ll bring it on the bus.”

In the pitch invasion madness that has immediately followed Munster triumphs for Waterford, he has always passed it onto his father for safe keeping.

“Lucky enough, we’ve won a few big games and we’d have crowds coming out onto the field, I’d spot the father and say, ‘here, look after that’, hoping to use it the next day.”

There were a few years when he went without it but with the compulsory wearing of them he has no choice now. How thankful he was for it in last year’s Munster final replay when it not only saved him a serious head injury but Waterford a Munster and having to face Cork yet again.

Putting his body on the line, he denied Cathal Naughton what surely would have been an equalising goal.

“Only for it... it was nasty enough,” he recalls. “It just goes to show the importance of wearing one too. I know a lot of lads were cribbing about the rule when it was brought in but even since I have started wearing it again the amount of belts and the knocks it has taken is amazing. I’d have had a few serious injuries had it not been for the helmet.”

Unlike its wearer, the helmet’s best days are probably behind it. Just the other night, Browne found himself taping it. But he swears by it. “No matter how old it is you get used to the feel of it.”

It was on him in that 88th minute of that tense replay just as it was when he cracked home the equalising goal in the 74th minute of the first game, reacting quickest to Eoin Kelly’s saved free. That a then 37-year-old could show such speed of thought at late junctures is a testament to him. But he humbly attributes those last-gasp flourishes to the character of his team.

“That’s one trait that Davy (Fitzgerald) brought to Waterford as a manager. With Clare in the 1990s, they had that never-say-die attitude. There are always going to be chances and you have to believe and never panic.

“A lot of lads bought into it and sticking to a game plan, playing as a team and not just doing your own thing.

“Hurling teams are so well prepared and got great managers and have video analysis, etc, there will usually only be a few points in it going into the last 10 minutes. Davy has spoken about chances always coming and now we believe we can get 1-3 or 1-4 in the space of a few minutes whereas before we’d probably panic if we were four or five points down. We’ve after maturing.”

He acknowledges the win over Limerick wasn’t exactly convincing but was content that they had progressed with five championship debutants in the team.

A final date with Tipperary was predicted as soon as the draw was made last October and Browne is enticed by the idea of Waterford giving a better account of themselves than in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final defeat to them.

A couple of weeks before that game, reports from the Waterford camp were glowing, following a weekend away in Castlemartyr.

So what happened in the semi-final? “It’s tricky but we were going well, we looked like we were really peaking at the right time coming into the game against Tipp. We didn’t really perform on the day.”

Making up for that will be on Browne’s mind when he boards the bus tomorrow with his helmet in his hand.

“There are not too many of them around at the moment, the old Cooper,” he grins.

The ‘old’ Brownes are a rarer breed.

Picture: HIGH FLYER: Tony Browne is relishing the chance to make up for last year’s failure when Waterford meet Tipperary tomorrow.Picture: Inpho/Billy Stickland