Success comes from learning for hurling guru Eamon O’Shea, writes Dermot Crowe
Direct hurling is effective hurling – the motto at Kilruane MacDonaghs in the hurling heartland of north Tipperary is one that could speak for the county as a whole. Out of this old-school environment came Eamon O’Shea, widely accepted as a progressive and innovative modern coach, the man who played a large hand in helping steer Tipperary on course to the 2010 All-Ireland title. Tipp ended Kilkenny’s reign in a spectacular four-goal heist.
He is seen as having had a major influence on Tipperary’s style of play but is quick to emphasise two things: everyone is subservient to the game itself and long-established county or club playing traits are sacrosanct. On Friday night, he was looking after the Salthill-Knocknacarra junior B hurlers in their final league game of the season. A professor of economics in NUIG, he is based in Galway city and all three of his children are on local club teams. “Mandatory,” he jokes about their affiliations.
In his own playing career he won a National League in 1979 with Tipperary, hurled for Dublin, won an All-Ireland with Kilruane as a goalscoring half-forward. Yet his crowning achievement with the Premier came almost two years ago when Lar Corbett scored a hat-trick of goals in an exhibition of eye-catching forward play to dramatically slay Kilkenny. O’Shea’s parting words reputedly before the players broke from their pre-match huddle were “attack, attack, attack”.
That victory took beating, outwitting and outgunning a side he reckons to be the best the game has known, and yet he will say that winning the Galway under 14 C title against Abbeyknockmoy at Pearse Stadium, he being one of the mentors, was unsurpassed in terms of anything experienced since.
Now he describes himself as a “fan” or a member of the community he always saw himself as serving. “The game has got quicker, it has got more mobility in it. At the moment in Clare for example you have a really good and skilful set of players. That may influence their style as being distinct, say, from the style in the 1990s when there was a much bigger player, stronger, when the game was different. But there can be an element of tradition too. In Tipp I think it would be very important to link it back to the traditional Tipp game. It’s essentially a game of the people. If I am involved in coaching a county or club team, I am part of them, the community. The public has to feel that it is their team. All you are doing is passing on the baton. The game is much more important than the person who is in charge.”
O’Shea absorbs ideas from various sports, citing the Dutch football model as one of those which has particularly interested him. “Just look at the Dutch and how they worked on movement. Any player has flexibility and can play in different places. You learn from rugby. I remember watching the All Blacks training and seeing how constantly the ball was being kept alive. And you then ask, ‘how do we manage to get our players to be able to do that?’”
He has had a range in influences back to Len Gaynor, his own club-man, the Williams’ in Kilruane, and Michael O’Grady his county minor coach. "Johnny Clifford was always someone I would have looked to, just people like him they had a simplicity in their game. He seemed to think about the game as much as the winning of it. I just also liked the Clare team of the '90s and how they managed to come from where they came from.
“You can’t play this game like a science. Len Gaynor brought passion and you can’t play the game without that. You can’t play it like some kind of detached individual. That is the first lesson you learn. Now you try to marry into the game other things like movement and exactness but essentially the game doesn’t change.”
Tactics in hurling, he admits, are evolving and posing fresh challenges. Despite Brian Cody’s protestations to the contrary, he regards Kilkenny as a leader in the field of innovation and strategic planning. “One of the things that should be noted is that Kilkenny have been the constant in the last ten years in particular – they have constantly made innovations. People tend to look and say they are so physical but certainly in the last few years, the way their midfielders push forward, the way they defend, half-forwards dropping back, the runs off the shoulder, the way they react to breaks, they have done it quietly – it is not in your face, like the Cork handpassing, or the stick-passing like we have would have done.”
But what of Cody’s line that Kilkenny don’t do tactics? "But they do learning. Teams all learn from each other, so you have to copy styles. Club managers may want to emulate what they see as being successful. But the really good ones see what can be adapted to their own game. When we set out with Tipp, I wanted to bring in more stick play but yet I had to marry that to the Tipp tradition for an effective style. In other words we couldn’t be Cork mark two, it just wouldn’t work.
"It has to marry with the traditional element in Tipp hurling, it has to go back to the rooted principles, the hurling had to have the degree of physicality in it.
"And I think if you try to take that out you might lose the confidence not necessarily of the players but of the hurling fraternity. That is necessary in my view, that has to be with us.
“I even think Limerick came back this year to play a more traditional brand of hurling, more passionate and less detached and I think that suits them actually. I can remember (over the years) they would come with this great passion, an up-and-at-them approach.”
O’Shea feels physical training has “gone too far” and clubs should concentrate on sourcing coaches from within rather than outside the parish boundaries. "I think the centrality of the GAA is to do with the local rivalry and pride and developing a club and parish etc. Sometimes it is being watered down a bit through this desire for success I suppose in one sense but that can be measured in many different ways. And in hurling too many are measuring it in terms of winning things.
“When I was growing up young players saw a lot more hurling matches and went to a lot more live matches. I live in an urban area and I feel they don’t see enough games in Galway, the county have maybe two league games at home every year, so how can they build up a fan base? Whereas Connacht have ten or 12 Magners League games. Hurling relies on success during the summer. Life doesn’t revolve around the local GAA pitch any more in many areas. It is one element of a busy life.”
O’Shea has spent some of his time this year coaching in Donegal, an area assigned to him under a development drive launched by the GAA president Liam O’Neill. He doesn’t need to be told of the vast universe that applies to hurling standards even at county level.
"I think you can show at a very basic level that you care. You show that there are people who do value what you are doing here.
“It is the same as working in a place like Galway city where, apart from having no senior hurling club, you are up against everything, not only Gaelic football, you have tennis, squash, the amusements in Salthill; Galway is a city of fun 24-7, and in an sense what you are trying to do is make it as attractive as you can.”
Having worked with elite players and examined the correct degree of angle needed when making diagonal runs, coaching a local junior team isn’t as taxing. But he has greater scope to improve players from a technical point of view and also in terms of general awareness and decision-making.
"The idea is to create opportunities for players for things to happen. There is no way you can put a template in that says, ‘okay, today we are going to create a goal like this’. That is not on.
"People often say do a session with the forwards – you can’t do a session with forwards, you have to do a session with everybody. The goalkeeper is the player who can see everybody. The corner-back can change the point of attack. The wing-back can do the same.
“The midfield can drop back and carry the ball and that’s before you get to the forwards. People talk about space, tell us how you create space, but if spatial awareness is not in your head I cannot create it for you.”
As for today’s match between his native county and Kilkenny, he is at a loss to predict a winner. They are too evenly matched and he is not familiar with preparations as intimately as he once was. “As a fan I want Tipp to win,” he states, a reminder that he is again part of that fraternity from where he came.
http://www.independent.ie/sport/hurling/master-still-a-keen-student-3203657.html
