Frank Flannery’s psychological ploy gave huge lift to Oulart-The Ballagh

Breakthrough boss Frank Flannery has revealed the simple psychological ploy he used to help Oulart—The Ballagh overcome their AIB Leinster Club hurling final hoodoo.

The Wexford champions had played in six provincial deciders before last Sunday and lost the lot, including four-in-a-row between 2010 and 2013.

But Flannery, recently installed as Cork’s new coach, ignored all that baggage by refusing to call their latest final by its official name.

Instead, he insisted on terming the game an All-Ireland series game and all updates on the group’s Whatsapp messaging service were under the heading ‘All-Ireland quarter-final’. It appeared to help as Oulart led for virtually all of Sunday’s final against Dublin’s Cuala and made a mockery of their underdogs tag.

“We treated it as an All-Ireland quarter-final, there was never one mention of Leinster final in our dressing-room,” said Flannery.

“An All-Ireland quarter-final has been the message all year. We had a group text, a Whatsapp text, and on the heading was ‘All-Ireland quarter-final’. That’s the way we said we’d work it. We never mentioned Leinster final at all. The task was to beat Cuala, there was no mention of anything else. You can say it worked now after we got the win. I suppose it helped too Cuala had come on a really hot route and that took the pressure off us too.”

Flannery declined to comment on his new role as Cork coach, insisting Oulart deserve to be the centre of attention now. But the 33-year old admitted he will be ‘double jobbing’ in early 2016 as Oulart are through to an AIB All-Ireland semi-final against Na Piarsaigh on February 6.

If a recent encounter between the same two clubs is anything to go by, that could be where the double jobbing ends. “We played them on September 5 just gone, I think they were 16 points up at half-time, albeit in a practice game, so look, we’ll have to knuckle down and they’ll be red hot favourites to beat us,” said Flannery.

Highly rated Flannery was involved with Oulart last year when they failed to advance beyond the quarter-finals of the Wexford championship. But he agreed to continue the arduous 270-mile round trip from his Kanturk base in Cork this year because the players asked him to. “I felt I left them down last year, we lost the quarter-final and I said I couldn’t leave it on that note,” he said. “They asked me to come back and when fellas ask you to come back, you’ve got to come.”

Meanwhile, veteran Oulart midfielder Michael Jacob said the win silenced those who labelled the players ‘chokers’. “It was coming from people who know nothing about us, or who even know nothing about hurling, like that’s not on,” said former Wexford star Jacob.

“One of them was at it again the other night on Twitter. I won’t have to name him. That’s shut him up.” Jacob added: “There was some awful stuff went on. Like, the last time we were beaten (in the 2013 final) there was awful stuff said about us. They disrespected Mount Leinster Rangers to tell you the truth. They’d beaten Ballyboden, ourselves, they got to an All-Ireland final and there was awful stuff said on radio and by different pundits. “We’ve shut a few of them up.”