Browne is annoyed Limerick are under-rated
Despite going into this year’s campaign as champions, Browne says he’s annoyed Limerick are so far down the rankings before their opening championship game against Tipperary on Sunday.
“Last year we kind of knew ourselves how good we were but you don’t completely know until you win something or win a championship game and we did that last year and we drove on,” he said.
“This year now if there’s any pressure coming it’s coming from within because if you were to read papers or listen to the radio or any of that, we’re back down rated seventh or eighth again in Ireland. To be honest, we haven’t done a whole pile wrong to be put back down there. The league, ok, we had our setback but the league is the league at the end of the day.
“It doesn’t matter too much coming into championship, the pressure is from within and to be honest people just want us to slip away back into the shadows now; Limerick have their medal or their trophy and they just want us to slip away, ‘Lads, stay quiet there for the next ten years or whatever it is and come back to us again and we’d love to see you in the Gaelic Grounds with all the scenes again or whatever’, but we’re not interested in any of that carry-on.
“We’re too good a group and we’ve too good a bond to be interested in those kind of thing. I find it annoying. Last year was kind of a watershed moment and this year now we may as well not have won Munster at all to be honest from talking to people.
“We’d be rated below everyone again this year, I think, if you were to ask a lot of people. I can’t see how. It’sannoying. It brings a pressure in itself to prove ourselves again.”
Tipperary against Thurles on Sunday is a test Browne is looking forward to.
“We’re ready to drive on now again. Playing in Thurles, I love playing there to be honest. You hear this myth and this hoodoo about Limerick in Thurles not having won a game in so long. It holds no sway with the group of players that are there at all.”
Browne points to the drive in the group to improve themselves: “In the team itself there would be a few leaders who would be always looking for the next edge or reading up on this or that. Gavin O’Mahony and Paudie O’Brien would be two of those main drivers, Nicky Quaid as well.
“There’s a few of our leaders on the team who would always be driving you on and you’d like to copy what they’re doing at times or you might find something yourself but you’re always looking for the edge. If you’re doing something that someone else isn’t doing, obviously you’ve a small edge on them or if they’re doing likewise they have a small edge on you.
“It’s all about the one percents or whatever, gathering them all up and, at the end of the day, if you can count off more than the man you’re marking can you might come out on top.”
Part of that preparation relates to analysing how to play your position. Browne describes Tipperary’s midfield as “fairly formidable”.
“Yeah, look obviously you’ll analyse teams and the space is around midfield and stuff like that but they have a fairly formidable midfield so it presents its own challenge. Obviously we’ll have to do our own job on the day. The midfield battle is obviously important to any game.
“I suppose a lot of teams go with the sweeper now and it’s important how you move the ball out of defence. It’s important you play intelligent ball. The long ball doesn’t work too much any more, it’s kind of cut off by the sweeper, cut off by the loose man so it’s important how you link the ball from defence to midfield to attack, sensible ball to hand is kind of the way things are going.
“Does that make the midfielder a key man? I don’t know, I wouldn’t like to say that now but it’s important. Box to box is important but it’s important how you link with your half-back line. I think that’s one of the things that I’ve been learning over the past few years — it’s important to be a link man as well as a box to box kind of am. You’re just kind of told that if one lad goes forward the other lad holds or whatever. You want to end up marking the lad who might hold at times there. That’s kind of the way it’s gone; one lad might hold the centre and be the link man, the other might attack a little bit more and it works in a straight line more than side to side these days.
“I wouldn’t be the physically biggest midfielder but I don’t feel out of place in there. I just think work rate is the most important attribute a midfielder can have now because you have to be able to get those flicks in, get the hooks in and help our your defence. You have fellas turning around then and making the 20-yard or 30-yard sprint to get onto the end of a ball or link up with a half-forward or something like that.”
