Éire Óg boss O'Connor insists their best has not yet been seen 

Éire Óg manager Gerry O'Connor. Pic: Ray McManus/Sportsfile

Gerry O’Connor was on the road to Dublin long before daybreak on Monday morning. The instruction was to give him a bell any time between 7-10am.

Monday seemed the appropriate day for a chat with the Éire Óg Ennis manager. 

The Munster Club hurling final at the end of the week was of course our reason for annoying him, but when you have a core group of players fighting on two fronts all the way to the end of November, what is done at the beginning of the week carries almost greater weight than what happens at the far end on matchday.

Certainly, in their pocket of Ennis town, the Monday routine heavily influences Sunday results.

And at this stage of the year, the Monday routine is second nature to their dual cohort.

Into Grá Sláinte they go at 6pm of a Monday evening. The Ennis-based recovery and wellness centre serves recuperation in many forms. Float therapy, infrared sauna, finish sauna, cryotherapy baths, compression therapy, the works.

The Éire Óg lads are returning customers and recovery regulars such has been the length of their still running 2025 season.

Booking responsibility sits with the hurling management on the Monday after a football fixture, the football sideline in charge of contacting Grá Sláinte the weekend after a hurling game.

Either way, the slot is nearly held for them at this point.

From there, it is a short spin to the Éire Óg clubhouse for 7pm food. Post-grub, the entire hurling panel sit in for an analysis meeting where the tactical approach for tackling Ballygunner is presented and parsed through.

“Ronan Keane, one of our coaches, calls the Monday get-together our emotional recovery. We have a bite to eat, have a chat, we reset, and we absolutely reframe what we’re going after on Sunday,” O’Connor explained.

The three hours to Dublin on Monday were well used. Ours was not the sole call lined-up.

The day previous, O’Connor and the rest of the club were in Páirc Uí Chaoimh for an unsuccessful Munster football semi-final against St Finbarr’s.

Six starters - Aaron Fitzgerald, Ciarán Russell, Darren Moroney, David McNamara, Darren O’Brien, and Jarlath Collins - and second-half sub Aidan McGrath had all featured in the previous weekend’s Munster hurling semi-final win over Loughmore-Castleiney. That number would have been eight but for an injury to Oran Cahill.

This dual contingent has been on the go for 15 of the past 19 weekends. Within that was a run of six consecutive weekends of county championship group action and another unbroken six weekends of knockout fare on the local front.

Monday, so, is concerned with ironing out physical creases and checking in with lads to see how the playing load is weighing mentally.

That check-in was particularly important this week, not solely because it is a Munster final in front of them, but the fact they face into that Munster final off a first championship defeat in either code this year.

“You’d be looking at who came off [at Páirc Uí Chaoimh], Aaron [Fitzgerald] had an ankle injury against St Finbarr’s, Oran Cahill didn’t start because of a slight strain. You’d be checking in with those,” O’Connor continued.

“We’ve been incredibly lucky to have in our ranks the services of Owen Tarrant. He is light-years ahead of the game in terms of his strength and conditioning approach. He is systematically checking in on the players to ensure their minds and bodies are in the right place.

“We started off with him two years ago as S&C coach, but if you research him, he’s worked at very high levels within New Zealand and Japan rugby, and he’s brought all of that skillset to us, and more.

“Not alone has he been an S&C coach for us, but he has been a performance coach for the players and management. He’s been a huge difference in terms of how we’ve gone about our business this year.”

Joint-Clare manager for three years, it is hardly surprising that O’Connor has assembled a backroom team possessing such well-traveled knowledge.

One’s standards don’t drop when moving from inter-county back to the club sideline, but he’d be lying if he said there wasn’t enjoyment in the room to breathe that simply doesn’t exist when holding the Banner reins.

“When you are involved in inter-county, you are essentially a commodity. Everybody wants a piece of you, whether it is the players, the media, the county board, the supporters. When you are doing it with your club, you are just part of the community, and that is the best way I can put it.”

To Sunday, finally. A first Munster final appearance for Éire Óg. An eighth on the spin for their opponents.

What Ballygunner will bring and have been bringing for over a decade now is well established. For O’Connor’s crowd, the “exciting unknown” is a ceiling not yet reached.

“Over the last two years, we have given championship debuts to 11 players. That is unheard of in club hurling. We didn’t bring on a sub during the 2022 county final defeat because we didn’t have a bench. This year, we have brought on five subs in every match and they have impacted.

“Because we’re a young team, an inexperienced team, and because we’ve only played in patches this year, absolutely no way do we know what our ceiling is.

“I can guarantee you one thing, we’re ready to perform to the maximum of our ability, but I don’t actually know what that is because we haven’t seen it yet.”