He says he never stopped enjoying it through the torrents of rumour and critical appraisal that followed Tipperary through the spring and you know that he means it.
Eamon O’Shea will never be a media darling; he’s just not interested. But it’s part of the deal these days and he obliges, arriving in a hurry and taking his place in a hotel boardroom where journalists have assembled around a mahogany table.
It is raining outside. O'Shea has just driven from Galway, where he lives and works as a professor of economics at the university, to Thurles, a road which may well be the toughest drive in Ireland. He has travelled it in all weathers and zero light. There is training tonight. Tipperary's championship date against Limerick beckons and when O'Shea isn't answering questions, he gives you the impression that his mind is elsewhere. That it is on matters more important to him.
“If the structures and the attitudes are okay and so on, it gave you confidence that things would turn around, if it wasn’t right then you would know that this would be a little trickier,” he explains of his mindset during the few weeks when Tipperary couldn’t buy a win.
“You’re always waiting and hoping for it to turn, it’s always a cause for concern. I don’t blame people looking from the outside saying what’s wrong, this is not going well. From the inside I knew we were trying to do the right things.
“Some of the things I did and tried didn’t come off . . . so I knew I was causing some of the stuff that was going on.”
Flicker of a smile
And there it is. The final sentence comes with a flicker of a smile both amused and defiant. If there is any meaningful distinction between being a ‘coach’ and being a ‘manager’ then Eamon O’Shea embodies it. The game is everything.
What is the point of being there and of working with the cream of Tipperary hurling if you don’t push and search for the subtle, invaluable qualities which might just give a team an edge when it matters? During the league, he talked about the importance of enjoying the game, a notion that has gone out of fashion in the GAA. But for O’Shea, it is at the essence.
A few years ago, he contributed a spoken word essay to the morning radio series Sunday Miscellany entitled Hurling Chose Me. And the me, he makes clear, stands for any number of youngsters growing up in 1960s Tipp, when narrower choices and hours that felt like hours made the focus and glamour of county hurling all the more concentrated.
“Does any other game bind and set you free at the same time, allow you to look back and forward in equal measure?” he asked in that essay.
“Surely not.”
He isn’t going to abandon that view now that he is manager of Tipperary. Like any illustrious GAA county, Tipperary’s present generation is obligated to emulate the deeds of the teams whose photographs grace the pub walls throughout the county. The verve of their 2010 All-Ireland win – and the fact that they had beaten a Kilkenny side who had made a good stab at invincibility – gave high hopes that a rich period was on the horizon for Tipp.
It didn’t quite work out that way and this year’s league slump betrayed a fragile confidence not so much on the Tipperary training ground as on its streets and through its pastures.
‘Enjoy the most’
“You’re trying to see how to try to get through it. You don’t enjoy losing. The different question is whether you enjoy coming over to work with the players and that’s probably something that I enjoy the most, when you’re actually working with them.
“That reflects the quality of the players and every manager would say that – when they work hard and come back after a defeat and working hard, you’re thinking, yeah, these guys want to get it right so from that point of view, it’s never really been a problem in terms of enjoyment.”
Maybe it was simpler back in 2010 when he was coach and Liam Sheedy was manager, doing the front-of-house stuff. It was a terrific partnership but O'Shea is not bouncing back and forth on the phone now that Sheedy is part of those involved with the group trying to shape a new vision for the game.
“I genuinely believe that when we go out to play any county game that it is played in a good spirit. So I wouldn’t have an issue in terms of the approach to the game.
“I find that by and large inter-county games are played in the right spirit. I may be proved wrong but I don’t think there’s a problem with the approach to the game, I don’t think there’s cynicism there.
“I just wonder if we need the complexity of three cards in hurling, as long as we’re refereeing the game according to the rules. Although we may get it wrong, we go out to play the game in a reasonably respectful manner to the opposition, and I haven’t seen anything against us that I would consider to be unsportsmanlike.
“It’s a contact game, things can happen. So I honestly haven’t thought much about it but I wouldn’t be telling him (Liam Sheedy) anyway! He’d have a different view than I would on how the game should be played.”
In the minutes after the league final loss to Kilkenny, O’Shea stood in the corridor in Semple Stadium and said everything by his reluctance to say anything much at all beyond how proud he was of his players.
Even though he doesn’t live in the county, he said he was aware of the unease during the league and of the criticism.
“My heart is here and I know everything that happens here. There’s not a thing said or done here that I don’t know.”
Proud and restrained
So he seemed proud and restrained and, it appeared, somewhat stung that day in Thurles. But he never felt any vindication. It wasn’t about that.
“When I talk to anyone I talk to my players. With all due respect I don’t “talk” to anybody else, even when I’m talking to you.”
Maybe it was more to do with the fact that he desperately wants the best for his players. Maybe it is to do with spending a lifetime working in education that makes him regard the young men he coaches as more than warriors with hurls.
When O’Shea tells you that “it’s important that you’re aware of the wholeness of peoples lives, not just when they turn up in front of you for two hours or four hours”, you know immediately that he means it.
“Life is more important than their hurling.”
When he reviews this time last year, he allows that they didn’t get enough work done between the league final and the first-round defeat to Limerick. That mistake won’t be repeated. He knows successful managerial tenures are judged on All-Irelands won or not, even if his own view is somewhat different.
“I’ll be replaced as manager in due course. What we want to try and do, when we’re in there, is try to improve things or the way I want to see the game played. There’s a bigger project in there – the players in the dressing room. They’re going to outlive me in the dressingroom so they’ve got to know what it’s like to be successful, or to try to be successful. If we achieve that, it’s going to be easier for the next manager when he comes in. That’s the project.”
He believes the squad has improved and that if Tipp’ can get a run going in Munster or at all, they will be dangerous.
“That’s what the benefit of a run does for you – it allows you to work with the players when the ball is travelling at the level that you’d want to judge a player. That’s what we didn’t get last year and therefore, that takes a little bit longer.
“One of the things about hurling is that it’s a totally different game month by month. The January game is different to the February game, is different than the March game and everything is different than the May game or the June game. You have different types of hurlers coming in so that is the ultimate challenge.”
