*Kilmurry Ibrickane ladies football manager, David O’Brien. Photograph: Burren Eye Photography
KILMURRY IBRICKANE have been determined to prove their 2024 maiden success in the Clare LGFA senior championship was no fluke and are sixty minutes from claiming a second-ever title.
David O’Brien departed the management of the Clare intermediate ladies football side this spring and had intended to take a break, only to answer the call from Martina Moloney to take over as manager of Kilmurry Ibrickane’s ladies footballers which he did in March.
Saying yes to the Bricks has been worthwhile, he felt. “I had finished up with Clare in the league, it was always my goal to get through the league with Clare and finish up, take a break because I was busy at home with the girls but then the call came, Martina Moloney rang me, she asked me to think about it, I did for a couple of days and said what I had to lose, it wasn’t a tough decision to make, I won’t say it was one of the better decisions I made but I’ve found it really enjoyable, a good bunch of players and people”.
Whatever the age or gender, the love for football is infectious in Kilmurry Ibrickane, he noted. “Players love playing football up here, it is a national pastime up here and it is great because it is all positive, all players want to play for the green and red, from boys and girls to men and women, they just love football here, to come up from that sense it was easy”.
That Kilmurry Ibrickane have carved out a run to the final has come as no major surprise, the carpenter acknowledged. “They won in 2024, they were beaten in the semi-final by the Banner and felt they had come back and prove that it wasn’t a fluke in 2024, they’ve done that, we have good footballers, good players that are well capable of doing that. It was a good challenge in the sense that we had a lot of players with the county set-ups at minor and intermediate at the start of the year and also with Spanish Point’s run in the schools, it took a lot of players from us but they were playing high-level games, we had a core group to work with and we stuck together. When Clare were knocked out we all came back together, knuckled down, kept to ourselves and went for it”.
Sunday’s final opponents Fergus Rovers have caused some shocks along the way to set up the novel pairing. “If you look back at their trajectory over the last couple of years with Minor A, coming up from the intermediate and winning leagues, their second team competing very well, they have two teams at nearly every age-group at underage and two teams at adult level which is mighty and a brilliant achievement for a club. It is a club with so much history at the advent of ladies football in Clare, they were really dominant for a while but with numbers Lissycasey and its surrounds have grown again in the last twenty years, this is the proof of it when they are getting the players to make numbers and get quality players, some of them won the minor with Clare two years ago, they played last year too and have quality coming through, it is great for football to have other teams coming through like Kilmurry Ibrickane in 2024, Kilmihil in 2019, you need clubs coming through to improve the game and make other teams step up”.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, he felt the conditions at St Michael’s Park could impasct Sunday’s result. “Weather has a big bearing on everything now, we’re coming into winter so I hope we get a good day and that the weather doesn’t have any impact, we don’t want a game of two halves. Our scoring threat is there, it is good, likewise Fergus Rovers move the play really fast so we need to deal with that and that is our challenge, their tenacity in the tackle, they are really good tacklers and double up well”.
From Cree, O’Brien lined out at wing forward and full forward for Cooraclare in his playing days, “I wasn’t great,” he stressed. Plans to go back playing junior for the club were thwarted by a workplace accident in the spring of 2008, “I was no superstar. I was working away and trading, I fell off a roof when I was about to go back playing junior football, that stopped it all, I broke my back at the age of thirty, four vertebrae in my back were broken, I fell off a slatted house in Inch, that stopped everything”.
For a tradesman to be out of work during as the Celtic Tiger was crashing had its challenges. “I was out of work for a year and a half, the bones of two years nearly, it was a very tough time but I got through it, football kept us going”.
Taking over the senior ladies football side of St Joseph’s Miltown in 2016 was followed by stints in charge of Kilmihil and his native Cooraclare plus a stint as selector with the Milesians’ men’s side. In 2014, he was in charge of the Clare U14 side that reached the Munster A final while he tasted All-Ireland C success with the Clare minors in 2022. He served as Chairperson of Clare LGFA for a season, resigning suddenly in December 2020.
Clare LGFA’s fixtures mess this weekend has O’Brien has another casualty, he’ll be unable to make it to Kilrush to watch his daughter Siofra in action for Cooraclare in the intermediate final. “Siofra is on the intermediate panel the youngest lady, Sadbh and Ailish are in with the juniors, at least they’re playing,” he said of the family involvement. “My wife Áine is the FLO with the Cooraclare intermediate team, she’ll be in Kilrush and I won’t get to see that game, that is the way it is. It’s full-on in the house because it is all football, it is enjoyable though”.
Unbeaten in their four championship games, David has been pleased with their consistency. He said, “Consistency is what every team aims for and wants to have, we’ve done it, we’ve been consistent, our approach has been similar in that it is game by game, it is not laissez faire, it is structured and players know their roles and they are doing it to the best of their ability, there is a flash of every genius that nobody can allow for, Fergus Rovers have them players and we have them players to it makes for a good final”.
Liscannor led them by three points at half time of the semi-final but the Bricks remained defiant. “It was a big breeze in Kilrush and Liscannor played with it for the first half, maybe it took us a while to settle, we had a five-week break so it took us a while to get to game pace, even though we had challenge matches and had sessions all along, it took us a bit to get to grips with the pace of the game and knew how Liscannor were going to play the game, it is similar to Fergus Rovers in that it is non-stop up and down, they are really fit and good at it so once we got to grips with it and got our scoring boots on we settled into the game, we took our chances which was a lot of it”.
There’s another vacancy in ladies football circles, O’Brien does plan to take a break once the club season concludes, he had the same thinking when the Kilmurry Ibrickane call came so what about the prospect of taking over Clare’s intermediates as manager. – “I love being involved with Clare and the dynamic of players from all around the county coming in and giving their best, you see different styles of football when you travel around the country, you play different teams but I don’t think I’m good enough at the minute”.
