*Gearoid O’Donnell.
TOP SCORER when Crusheen last won a senior county final, Gearoid O’Donnell still feels the itch to play but has to be a content with a role among the club’s management.
Gearoid hit 0-3 from wing forward when Crusheen accounted for Sixmilebridge in the muddy final of 2011 to win back to back titles.
O’Donnell is on the wing again but this time on the other side of the white line. He was among the ex players drafted in by Michael Browne when the club went about forming a management team for the coming season.
When such conversations were underway, there was no talk about county finals. “We met early last January and February, the talk was to get out of the group and if we could that see what happens after that, that was the ambition”.
In the 2014 decider, Crusheen lost out to Cratloe by a margin of eight points, O’Donnell admitted he didn’t think it would take almost a decade for the club to return to the senior final. “I suppose you wouldn’t especially when you’re still playing, you’re still hoping you will get there the year after or the one after that but as the years went on it went back to a rebuilding thing, we found ourselves further than we thought we would have, any time an opportunity comes we will try and take it”.
Part of that rebuilding has been aided by Crusheen/Tubber tasting success in the U21B championship on two occasions over the past five years. Cilléin Mullins, Breffni Horner and Ross Hayes were part of the victorious 2018 managed by current selector Alan Tuohy while Oisin O’Donnell, Diarmuid Mullins, Tadhg Dean, Éanna McMahon, Ian O’Brien and Luke Ketelaar were among the winners in 2021. “It is important to keep young lads going, winning is very good for them just to win something, it brings them that bit more on,” O’Donnell said of the success.
2017 saw Gearoid finish up playing senior, he did line out with club’s second team with the Junior A final of 2021 his last game . Post-playing, he has primarily been involved with Crusheen’s U8s and U10s before he was “roped into the seniors this year”.
Serving as a selector is “totally different” to playing, Gearoid observed. “Everyone wants to play, when you come to the stage that you can’t play it is probably the next best thing but it wouldn’t compare to playing, as the year has gone on and the days have got bigger it has got better. Come championship day even as a selector you’d still have an itch that you’d want to be playing”.
A carpenter by trade, he admitted that hurling is in his head more now during his working days than when he was playing. “As a player you’re only focused on yourself but when you’re involved as a selector you’re thinking of different things, you’d be working during the day and often times you could be up on a roof for a couple of hours where there is nothing else going on so you would have stuff in your head that you would be thinking about”.
Reflecting back on their championship run, he felt they were unlucky not to beat Sixmilebridge in the opening round. “On the day they got a goal and we missed a goal which was the difference, the bit of experience in that they were that bit further down the road and that is what helped them”.
Come round two they had to treat the O’Callaghans Mills as knockout. “It was a big game after losing the first one, we thought we had performed fairly well on the first one so we had to treat the Mills as a knockout game and it was winner take all”.
Then in round three, he acknowledged that their display against Clonlara was among one of the most un-Crusheen like performances witnessed in living memory. “I don’t know what went wrong, we thought we had prepared well for it, Clonlara were very good on the day, we just didn’t show up from the word go, we weren’t at the pace of the game and the more it went on we just couldn’t get into it, it was very a disappointing day out”.
Since they have come out swinging and blown away Newmarket-on-Fergus and Scariff, despite going in as underdogs on each occasion. “We were out of the championship and then an hour later we were back in the championship, we took it from there, it was a free shot, we were back in and we went for it. They embraced it really well, there was no need for motivation there, they have really embraced it”.
“After that Clonlara game the big one was the quarter final, all we focused on for that month was training hard and a performance, whatever came out of it we said we’d take it once we got a performance and that is the way we treated it. It was the same the last day against Scariff, we went in looking for a performance”.
That they get to meet Clonlara again is irrelevant in terms of motivation, he felt. “There would be motivation of course but it’s a county final and there will be motivation no matter who you are playing, we would feel we didn’t ourselves justice on that day. They are the form team, they are unbeaten, they were very impressive in the semi-final and on most days they have played, it is going to be a big task but we will give it a go”.
On the differences between the last Crusheen team to contest a county final and the current crop, he observed, “The younger lads are very good hurlers, they are very good to train, very committed, when they set their mind to something or if you ask them to do something they will do it, that is the honesty of them and they are very good to train”.
A lift has been evident at underage training since the last two wins have been achieved by the senior side, Gearoid noted. “You can see them all coming to training with the Crusheen gear on, they all know the Crusheen lads now whereas some of them might not have earlier on in the year, they’d be very excited when they see them around the pitch or even the last day they were all mad to get on the pitch, things like that it is what the young lads remember going forward”.
That said, he admitted that the U8s and U10s don’t tend to be more receptive to his instructions, even though he is a selector to the senior side they are so fond of.
This week, O’Donnell’s message to the players is simple. “It is like any final you go into, it is just to perform, the main thing I’d tell a player is just to have no regrets when you come off the field. I played in four finals, won two and lost two, it is very disheartening to come off the field following the games where you didn’t perform, leave everything on the field and if you come off and are still beaten then you can take it”.
