‘We’ll give this a good rattle’

Looking at the scoreline you’d assume a cakewalk. Ballygunner ran up 4-20 when beating Passage last Sunday, collecting a third Waterford senior hurling title in a row.

For Gunners goalkeeper Stephen O’Keeffe, however, there was no relaxing until the final whistle or thereabouts.

“We had to battle for it. After three years ago, and what happened that time, I certainly wasn’t taking it for granted at any stage. When we got to injury time fair enough, I finally breathed a sigh of relief and felt it was over.”

Ah yes, three years ago, when Passage hit 2-4 in the last seven minutes to collect the title. That wasn’t going to happen last week, and conditions were partly responsible.

“In fairness, the wind was a big factor last Sunday,” says O’Keeffe. “It was gale force and I suppose the game was always going to come down to whoever would manage that wind better.We got two goals in the first-half and managed not to concede at the other end. We had to make one or two last-ditch tackles to make sure we didn’t concede those goals - if they’d gone in it could have been a very different game. It was a very big margin at the end, but little things turned it our way at various times.” They’ve been in so many different on-field scenarios as a team over recent years that little can come as a surprise, surely.

“That experience is a huge help. As you say, we’ve almost been in every situation you could envisage as a team. We’re not that old, really, as a team, but we have some serious miles on the clock. The core group has been in place for the last six or seven years, so there’s a good understanding between us all.

“It’s not a matter of huge tactics a lot of the time - the thing kind of drives itself at this stage because of that understanding.”

Manager Denis Walsh said after the win last Sunday the players were strongly self-motivated: “I think we are, the group is strongly driven and there are also a lot of intelligent lads on the team. That helps, too.

“You know not to be dragged all over the place if you’re a back, you know to create some room up front if you’re a forward — common sense stuff.

“At the end of the day at club level the tactical element usually isn’t as strong, so if you have a good team that has their house in order. And the management understands that and doesn’t try to bog us down in details either.”

They don’t count their chickens either. The prospect of Thurles Sarsfields on Sunday was well parked ahead of the county final.

“We weren’t looking past Passage so our heads are only clearing now and the focus is beginning on Thurles - it’d be madness, absolutely, to have been thinking past Sunday.

“Sarsfields have a phenomenal club team, so in a lot of ways the pressure is off us in one sense. People might be saying after the year Tipp had, and a lot of the Sars lads were involved, that the pressure is on them, but the pressure was on us too last Sunday and we responded well to it.

“A lot of these things are looked at in hindsight, really - if we win on Sunday people will say then the pressure got to Thurles, whereas if Sars win people will say they rose to that pressure.”

O’Keeffe had a long season with the Waterford seniors: is it almost a relief, coming back to the black and red?

“It’s like chalk and cheese, the two different experiences - when you’re with Waterford you’re in that bubble, and you need a little break after that. As Philip (Mahony) said last week in the Examiner, the fact the U21s went so well gave us another bit of a break before the club championship cranked up again.

“But it’s never a bad thing falling back in with the club, your friends and your family. And when you’re winning, that makes it that much better.

“That doesn’t mean we went over the top last weekend. We went out on the Sunday but nobody went out on the Monday, which might have been unusual but given the game this Sunday that would have been shooting yourself in the foot completely. We want to give this a good rattle.”