McBrearty relishes winter warmer against Crokes

Winter training is an undeniably hard slog in London, but it’s almost become second nature to Brian McBrearty.

The Letterkenny native is approaching the end of his ninth year with Tir Chonaill Gaels, and for five of those he has toiled through the muck in semi-darkness in the hope of making the breakthrough on the All-Ireland scene. During that period, the Gaels have frightened the lives out of the likes of Nemo Rangers, Crossmaglen and Kilmurry-Ibrickane, who all escaped Ruislip with four-point successes.

Now another heavyweight is visiting north-west London. Dr Crokes have won two trophies in the last two weeks and are intent on heading into Christmas with a hat-trick of victories.

“This will be my fifth All-Ireland quarter-final and it’s probably the hardest game of the lot,” says McBrearty, whose side are 8/1 underdogs to take the scalp of the Kerry kingpins. “Any team that has the Gooch spearheading their attack is going to be hard to beat.

“They’ve had games over the last couple of weekends too. That’s the seventh year in-a-row they’ve won the East Kerry Championship.

“After what happened them last year, losing in the semi-final to Crossmaglen, they feel they left the All-Ireland title behind them and are on a crusade to get it this year. It’ll be very hard to stop them.”

For McBrearty, this will be the first time he has played an All-Ireland quarter-final before Christmas, which eliminates the problem of getting players together back in Ireland for training during the festive period.

But the annual disadvantages remain for London’s All-Ireland representatives, such as the lack of competitive games. TCG’s last outing was the Division 1 final at the end of October — Dr Crokes have had four serious games since then.

“That’s the hardest thing about being over here, getting competitive games,” admits McBrearty. “We played St Kiernan’s in the league final and that was a good game. We’ve also played a couple of challenge games in Ireland against DIT and Maynooth, but you don’t know if they’re taking it seriously, as it’s a team coming over from England.

“We’ve been training out on our own and it’s been hard. Lads are especially busy with work at this time of year, trying to earn an extra few pound. And the weather hasn’t helped either; the pitches are either waterlogged or really hard.”

McBrearty was an ever-present between the posts as the Gaels stormed to a record 14th London SFC title in their 50th anniversary year. Under the stewardship of former Kilmacud Crokes manager Paddy Carr, they scored 10-76 in five championship games and had an average winning margin of over 12 points.

However, the massive jump in quality when it comes to the All-Ireland series, coupled with the lack of games, leaves the Gaels with a mountainous task.

“It’s almost an impossible one,” admits McBrearty. “We’re underdogs, and rightfully so, but we can only go out and do our best and see where that takes us. We’ll throw everything at the Crokes, they’ll do the same to us, and it’ll be a case of seeing where we stand after the first 15 minutes.

“We’ve done a lot of fitness training so we hope we can compete with them on that front. But in terms of football, they’re a bit ahead of us.

“What have we got to lose? It’s a one-off game and that’s the way we’re approaching it. There’s no pressure on us.”