‘We were searching for the inches everywhere’

IT’S odd because yesterday morning in the Rochestown Park Hotel in Douglas, we spoke theoretically to the players about the type of game this Munster final might be.

I said I’d no idea what way it might go, but if I gave ye a Munster Championship medal now and told you the score would be 0-4 to 0-3, would ye take it?

Psychologically, our lads were prepared for what followed; they knew it was going to be tight, and goals are always extra important in such a game.

With the exception of the County League final against Kerins O’Rahillys and the County Championship final defeat to Dr Crokes last year, we won a lot of these type of games — what you’d call dirty games. The most important thing was management challenged the lads this time, not because they had a bad season in 2013, but because they didn’t get over the line last year.

We held on to all the things we’d done well and we made a decision to bring in a very specific strength and conditioning coach in Ciarán McCabe, and he has made an enormous difference. But there are always lot of other small things — we were searching for the inches everywhere.

I drafted in Jerome Stack, a 40-year lifelong friend of mine from Listowel. When I was thinking of someone who could add something to us, he came quickly to mind. Along with Donie Buckley, Jerome is, in my view, the best technical GAA skills coach in the country. Billy Lee also came in and did invaluable work. He was with Liam Kearns when he was Limerick coach, and is a huge plus to any set-up. But no more so than selectors John Sugrue and Paul Lucey, the corner back on Stacks’ only previous Munster club-winning team.

Even when we were winning matches this season, we were still being very critical of ourselves. When we sit down and look at the stats from this final, I think we’ll conclude that it was a brilliant team performance with 14 men — but it wasn’t a complete performance.

Before the Munster semi against Ballincollig, I said something to the lads that I’ve always put store in: good things come to those who believe, better things come to those who are patient, but the very best things come to those who never, ever, give up. That resonates with these players. All we’ve tried to do as a management team with Stacks is get out of them what’s already in there. If they didn’t have it within themselves to do what they achieved yesterday, me or Mick O’Dwyer or any other manager couldn’t get it out.

And even the fact that five of our players probably should have gone to America this past summer for personal reasons. We did everything we could to keep them at home and (vice chairman) Liam Lynch was fantastic in that regard, he set up a sub committee for that precise purpose — but the players made the decisions to stay around.

Players that go to America do so for two reasons — financial and social. Most of those fellas I’m talking about are last-year in college, looking to go over and join lads they’ve spent four years with in college and really enjoy themselves. But when they are making such a sacrifice for the club, wouldn’t any management team say we have be willing to do anything we can to help them?

We even planned the slow start again yesterday — just to make it difficult for ourselves...

No, I’m jesting, but we did discuss the scenario if we didn’t get the good start we intended. The Nire got a run on us in the first 10 minutes, and we were making poor decisions. One of the things we did work on tactically was their short kick-outs. Ten of the kick-outs they had won in the Cratloe game were short kick-outs, so we had told the lads ‘take a chance, you never know.’ That worked for us with David Mannix’s goal.

It was Shane O’Callaghan who got us the foothold we badly needed with his goal from nothing. Talk about leadership. To get up and win the ball that he won — it was borderline a penalty in my view anyway — only underlines why we all have such huge regard for him.

What I generally look at in terms of a player’s performance is not necessarily the things he’s good at — but the dirty work, tackling and turnovers. His stats in that regard are among the highest we have and that gives you an idea of Shane’s honesty. There’s nothing better than a forward who’s prepared to show for the ball when you need an outlet.

He is quite strong, he has very good feet and he sets himself up very well going for the ball. He might look slight but he’s actually very blocky, and a brilliant target man for us yesterday — as was David Mannix.

The two of them were a proper handful inside. The Nire must have been very disappointed we were level with them at half-time, given how well they played in the first half, but the two goals were like bars of gold out of Fort Knox. Two great poacher’s goals that really steadied the ship for us.

* In conversation with Tony Leen