*Éire Óg manager, Gerry O’Connor. Photograph: Ruth Griffin.
ÉIRE ÓG will have no fear of facing off with 2022 All-Ireland champions Ballygunner in Sunday’s Munster club final.
Midfielder Oran Cahill who missed out on Éire Óg’s exit to St Finbarr’s in the Munster club football semi-final is expected to be included in the starting fifteen for the Townies as they make the trip to Tipp.
Manager Gerry O’Connor outlined that Éire Óg will look to hit Ballygunner with their own game plan. “We’re going out to enjoy the occasion. This is our sixth week back full training and we’re ready to give a performance, there’s no question about that, we’ve done our analysis, we know exactly what Ballygunner are going to bring, it won’t do us much good knowing what they are going to do unless we counteract it and impose our own game plan on them, ultimately we’re in very good shape, the key thing is getting through the football injury free, we’ve been very lucky with injuries, that is down again to S&C on one hand which gives you the power to absorb and make tackles but the other thing is a good S&C programme makes you remain as injury free as possible”.
Lifting the Canon Hamilton for the first time since 1990 has took off a weight off their shoulders but Éire Óg are keen to deliver in Munster. “It is a fantastic place to be, it is a reward for getting over the line in Clare and across the line against Loughmore-Castleiney, the narrative out there is that it is bonus territory for us but we certainly wouldn’t look at it that way at all. From our perspective, the seasoned experienced teams like Loughmore-Castleiney and Ballygunner, over the last five or ten years what you see is what you get, they turn up in that regard every day that they play, they are so used to playing together and are far more advanced in their journey in terms of where their team is at compared to us. We would argue that we’ve such a young inexperienced team that we’re not sure exactly how high our ceiling is, we feel we’ve played in patches, the pressure of playing in the Clare senior championship and the pressure of the last ten years on this group of players to get their hands on the Canon, naturally you would feel a pressure release and that you would go on and play with more freedom but that didn’t happen against Loughmore-Castleiney, we were very tentative in that first half, it is testament to our players that they felt the same amount of pressure to perform against Loughmore-Castleiney as they did in all the six Clare championship matches we played”.
During an in-depth interview with The Clare Echo, the subject of strength and conditioning, particularly the impact of S&C coach Owen Tarrant, a native of Kilrush who has worked with the senior footballers of Mayo and Clare also brings with him plenty of rugby experience from his time as S&C coach and assistant sports scientist with the Chiefs Rugby Club in New Zealand along with roles in Young Munster, Garryowen, Kobe Steelers Rugby and Japan RFU.
O’Connor felt the mix of Tarrant’s addition together with the pathway on Clare development squads has aided the growth of their panel. “We would like to think that our fitness levels are at a colossal level, it is my first time at club level bringing in a full-time S&C guy and Owen Tarrant has been a revelation in the work that he has done, we started this journey with Owen Tarrant on the December 9th 2023, the challenge was we had no bench against Ballyea in 2022 so there was an opportunity for new young players to come in and claim spots on the team but ultimately the challenge we had was these were all young lads who were sixteen, seventeen and eighteen but over the past two to three years we’ve given eleven debutants an opportunity to play senior hurling that are under twenty. Basically how we succeeded in that was Owen Tarrant over a five month period in 2023 and a five month period in 2024 went into the gym.
“Kieran McDermott was with us earlier, we were saying that all these fellas had been exposed to S&C through the Clare development squad so they were able to take the load Tarrant was exposing them to because the challenge was they were young, light and inexperienced so they had to put on ten percent bodyweight, James O’Dwyer went from 60kg to 70kg over a five month period, that is a serious gain because even if you put on 10kg you will lose 5kg over the course of the championship when you’re playing and running, he tailored our year so well this year. The other strategy he employed was you’d normally train then taper off then train and taper off going into matches and the season, once we started training back in April on the field, it was incremental improvements, it was a high risk and reward strategy, we trained right through the championship, even between championship games we may have shortened the duration of the session but we were building incrementally intensity wise through the season. We would feel we are very well prepared to give a really good performance on Sunday,” he added.
A three-time All-Ireland and Munster winning joint manager with Clare, Gerry was effusive in his praise for the Kilrush S&C coach. “I would say Owen Tarrant has exceeded anything we were doing with Clare, not alone is he the S&C coach but he became our performance coach, by being a performance coach he challenged the players and the management, we’ve made a lot of tweaks along the way since we started out in 2024 he has been a huge driving force. What he has been exposed to in his coaching career, he is a global rugby S&C coach, it has been the most rewarding two years of my life to be working with guys like him”.
In another life, Gerry worked with Owen’s father when he was based at Moneypoint from 1983 to 1996, he moved from there to Fox Engineers in Dublin for fourteen years before another fourteen year stint, this time at Mincon in Shannon while he changed jobs this April to become Sales Manager with Avonmore Electrical. “In a very funny twist of faith, I never knew Owen Tarrant but I didn’t realise it, I worked with his Dad in Moneypoint years ago and so did Geraldine my wife, it is an unusual coincidence but for the fifteen years I was in Moneypoint, Pat a Kerry man worked in the same power station, I didn’t realise it until we had set up a number of interviews, for him to get involved with us was the most strategic appointment we’ve made as a management was to embrace Owen Tarrant,” he recounted.
Clubs in Clare are at a different level with their S&C focus compared to when Gerry and Donal Moloney managed the county senior hurlers for three seasons. “I think every club has an S&C now, I would say what was going on eight or nine years ago when Donal and myself were involved, I would say most clubs have surpassed that now, most clubs have a top class S&C, it also coincided with the Clare development squads and the number of players they were exposing to S&C, Éire Óg have been the one team that have benefitted hugely from that. There was opportunity there, we needed to build a bench and the players embraced it”.
Arguably the greatest example of player development for Éire Óg has been Robert Loftus. He kept Aidan McCarthy scoreless from play in the Clare SHC quarter-final before then curbing Hurler of the Year John McGrath in the Munster club semi-final. “You can’t beat DNA, John Russell gave me the history lesson on Robert’s grandfather and grand-uncle, the Loftus name has been synonymous with Clare and Éire Óg, by God Robert has carried on that tradition and he has a younger brother David who is starting out on the same journey that Robert started off on two years ago, it is some story.
“Robert had a lot of exposure to top class coaching through the development squads but Tom Kavanagh has probably been more of a find for us because he has come from nowhere over the last twelve months in particular, if you’re looking for someone to bring energy and impact, it is one thing having a bench but they have to impact, we’ve been lucky to be able to bring on five subs, we’re heading into our eighth game in championship this year and for the last seven games we’ve introduced five subs, it is one thing bringing them but it is another thing making sure we have an impact. The most positive thing from our point of view is all five subs have had an impact when they have come on”.
Joining O’Connor, Russell and Tarrant on the management are Ronan Keane and coach Liam Cronin. “It is tackle count and turnovers. We’ve a very good stats team with Ronan Cooney, Ciaran Frawley and John O’Sullivan head up, it is tackle count, possessions and turnovers, they are the three key metrics,” he explained of the key metrics they look out for in games.
Standing out as the best example of tackles and turnovers was the move which led to their first score from play in the Munster semi-final. Shane O’Donnell made the tackle and dispossession to win a turnover for the Ennis side which resulted in Marco Cleary pointing. “Ultimately the players don’t know what way the stats are going until half time. We’ve a good communication system going between Cronin and myself, we get messaging in and Cronin is very closely positioned to the stats team. It wasn’t that the tackle count was down, it just wasn’t effective enough, the tackles were being made but the problem we were having is that if you spill any breaking ball and you’re not on point for the breaking ball. The biggest challenge we had in the first fifteen minutes was we were a little tentative and the short stick passes were going to feet rather to hand, we were being turned over, a good percentage of the scores they got in the first half were as a result of unforced errors on our behalf”.
