*St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield defender, Conor O’Brien. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
COOL HEADS are needed on the big days like county finals, St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield defender Conor O’Brien is always a calm figure within the dressing room, the approach is not just to help the team but also his health.
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As a diabetic, Conor has to avoid spiking blood levels which can be difficult in a testosterone induced environment like a dressing room but it is a skill he has learned to master since his diagnosis at the age of twelve. “When you’re seventeen or eighteen playing bigger games, the spike of adrenaline can really affect your blood sugars and you’d feel atrocious so I’ve learned to try keep as calm as I can”.
Therefore in the build-up to the club’s first Clare SFC final appearance in thirteen years, O’Brien won’t be getting too excited. He explained, “I have diabetes so if it’s a thing where I get a bit excited or go mad about anything the blood sugar just goes sky high so I basically just keep calm”.
Within The Parish, they are energised as county final day looms closer. “People are delighted we’re in the final and like there’s been so much excitement since we got over Quilty because winning a knockout game was something we hadn’t done in so long. The last day we were just like we had to win, we can’t just win one knockout game and be done so now it’s a final and sure enough it’s Éire Óg, they are the best team that you’re going to play so that’s who you have to beat. We have lads coming back, everyone is fit, we know we have to play our best, if we can go out and just do that which we are doing more consistently and now is the ideal time to be doing it”.
When Doora/Barefield last contested the SFC final, losing Kilmurry Ibrickane 0-10 0-4 in 2012, Conor was the youngest member of the panel. Now as has been the case for the past three seasons, he is the oldest on their team and squad. “I was only there for the last couple of games. It was just after we were finished with the Clare minors, then they brought us onto the panel. I could have been number 30, or whatever,” he recalled of 2012.
Thirty one year old Conor told The Clare Echo, “I’ve been the oldest for the last few years now. It’s a young team in general, there’s not many senior teams anywhere with the age profile we have. The lads have had a couple of minor wins along the way which is good, they’ve won a lot on the way up so that’s a good thing”.
Captain and full-back Darragh O’Shea who turns twenty six is the nearest in age to O’Brien. “We had the Hannans last year and Kieran Thynne who was the closest so he was only three or four years off but it’s been like this gap for a while in the last three years anyway I don’t think there was anyone older or that was consistently on the panel. When you’re playing away the age goes out the window or maybe my mental age goes down a bit lower when I’m with them all”.
Over his thirteen years on the senior panel, he has watched the dressing room evolve. “Obviously it was tough for a while at the start when I was first playing but when you lose lads of the quality of the Hannans it is tough too. For the couple of years before you have a lot of lads in college and they’re going away for the few months sin the summer which they have to do when they’re young. This year I don’t know did lads all decide they wanted to be around this summer and everything has just come together. It can be tough but I’m here and everything works out in the end doesn’t it”.
Examining why it has taken St Joseph’s thirteen years to return to the final, he said, “In 2012 there was that massive drop-off, I had loads of years that there was probably two big age-groups ahead of me so guys that were two to three years older and another group six or seven years older than me. They won a minor in 2010 and an U21 title but a lot of those lads went away and we ended up going down to intermediate. We were struggling for a long time. We were in relegation battles for a few years so it was kind of a good time to go down when we did because it gave us a rest. Over the last few years we’ve been building, we hadn’t won a knockout game for years but it can take lads a while to adapt, I think you nearly need to be twenty one or twenty two to be ready for it because it is a man’s game. It has come together this year and we’ve had a bit of luck too like we didn’t win in the group but we still qualified. The lads coming back from injuries has helped, Tom Curran was a massive addition for the semi-final”.
Altering the approach on fitness has been a big factor in things coming together for Donagh Vaughan’s side according to the centre back. “The management have put savage work into it. I remember we came into this room (meeting room two in Gurteen) at the very start when they were over us, we were talking about how we rated ourselves offensively and defensively in Clare and to be honest we rated ourselves fairly low on both sides, we wouldn’t have put ourselves in the top six in either so we’ve just been working on that. Obviously having the quality of lads who are able to score and a lot of good young lads is a help, winning the U21A last year was massive so a lot of them have won before but a lot of them are playing senior football now. It’s a mix of that and getting this together, being able to put into practice what the lads have been training us to do and drilling into us in the last few weeks. They’ve got us very fit and we’re as fit as we’ve ever been, I’m as fit as I’ve been in six or seven years. We haven’t had too many injuries whereas we’ve been hammered with hamstring injuries over the years. The fitness has kept up this year”.
He continued, “I know last year we did a lot of fitness early in the year, we were getting fit for the league and towards the end of the league we were at our best. The lads saw that and it was directed from the group. We ended up going down from the league and that was the main bit of fitness. This year with the new rules we spent a lot of time early in the year focusing on them, it was just a different way of playing and then we put the emphasis on getting fit maybe three or four months later than last year”.
For Doora/Barefield to win the U21A title last year not only lifted the crop of players but the entire club, he said. “Football wise I was part of the panel to win the minor in 2010 but I was brought down one of the days because they hadn’t enough players against Ennistymon, I was fifteen at the time and they brought another lad too who was fifteen, I maybe got ten minutes at the end. We won an U21B a few years and the intermediate in 2020 but even like the U21 win last year you’d nearly feel like you’re winning with the lads anyway”.
His father is an Ennistymon native but “funnily enough he says he hasn’t a football bone in his body and that it wasn’t for him”. Conor did play hurling up until a decade ago, his last outing being the club’s Junior C success. “Because I was working a lot of evenings I could only get two or three evenings off so I had to pick the one I was better at and I was better at the football anyway”.
An apprentice electrician, Conor changed career paths two years ago having worked as a personal trainer and swimming instructor, qualifying from Tralee Institute of Technology. “I decided to change about two years ago, those were jobs that there’s no real way up and so I needed something that provided a bit more money too and I went back into the trades,” he admitted.
There is a certain time limit on working as a personal trainer in the fitness industry, he felt. “It’s saturated the whole business. You’re codding a lot of people is how I feel about it now and you’re sorting people out for a small fee. The swim teaching was good but you’re not exactly getting enough to help you build a house or get a mortgage”.
Barefield’s Conor lined out with Clare at minor and U21 level under Michael Neylon of Corofin and the late Michael O’Shea. “I was with the minors in 2012 and I played with the U21s three years later, we lost to Tipperary and they had a lot of their best players then that went on to win the senior championship in 2021 like Colin O’Riordan and all the Clonmel Commercials lads. We lost to them and we lost to Kerry all the time,” he recalled.
