REACTION: Kiladangan manager John O'Meara's 'percent or two' the key factor for champions

John O’Meara is a man used to coming out on top in county finals and, in his first year involved with Kiladangan, he helped to bring the north Tipperary club to the promised land for the second time after a thrilling pair of games with a valiant Thurles Sarsfields side.

The Clare native has had his fair share of county success on the field and on the sideline in his time, most recently guiding his native Sixmilebridge to three Clare SHC titles in his six-year tenure, claiming the Canon Hamilton in 2013, 2015 and 2017 and he can now add a Dan Breen title to his CV after the epic win last Sunday.

“Any time you win a championship, in whatever grade, is brilliant because you invest into the group of players you are with, and today is no different,” O’Meara said in the thick of the post-match euphoria.

“These guys have been on the road a long time. I haven’t reinvented the wheel when I came to Kiladangan, I always said if I could just give them a percent or two.

“There are savage structures out there in the club and savage people involved in it. There is a brilliant coaching team within the group, a super back-room team.

“You don’t always get what you deserve in sport but to be fair to the effort the lads put in this year they got what they deserved today, just about!”

Despite being the dominant team for most of the game, the game hardly went away from a one score game throughout and the final ten minutes of the game had Kiladangan in a precarious position and starting down the barrel of yet another county final replay defeat, but O’Meara highlighted that his players have shown great character all year and that it was no surprise that they dragged themselves back from the brink.

“It didn’t look good,” he acknowledged.

“But if you look back over the course of the year, what they have done is they have showed savage resilience, if you got back to the North semi-final against Borris-Ileigh, their backs to the wall down a few fellas (but won). Things didn’t go well for us in the final, we got through the early rounds of the county, okay we took a bad turn against Borris-Ileigh in Nenagh but since the second half of hurling that day we really haven’t looked back.

“We showed resilience here against Holycross when we weren’t playing particularly well, Toomevara was another test and then onwards to the drawn match and today so every single question that has been asked of them to be fair, they have answered and got their rewards today.”

The man of the match on the day went to Willie Connors who put in an incredible performance. His impact was seen from the bench in the drawn game and many would have questioned whether the north club might have gotten the job done the first day had he started the game.

But O’Meara said that there was delicate handling needed with Connors involvement all year, and it pay dividends in Sunday’s replay.

“There were probably a lot of questions asked two weeks ago when he didn’t start but it has always been about managing Willie’s workload,” he mentioned.

”He had a very serious injury against Borris-Ileigh in the North semi-final and it has been about getting him back onto the pitch over a period of time.

“Luckily enough we didn’t need him in the earlier rounds, we needed him the last day and got 43 minutes out of him, and today it was about getting him in and he was ready,” he said.

The tactical battle was intriguing to say the least and the use of the ball by Kiladangan was so measured and in direct contrast to their opponents on the day, and was markedly different, even from the drawn final two weeks previous.

“You’ll always see that the replay never follows the pattern of the drawn game,” he remarked.

“The challenge after a drawn game is how quickly can you learn, firstly about yourself, and then about the opposition, and can you do both of them quicker than the opposition.

“Whether we did or not is debatable and after five minutes it looked like Thurles did but even after they got the goal I said to myself that Andy Loughnane was unlucky not to have gotten in for a goal before that and I felt we were at a pitch today that we weren’t at in the drawn game, even at six points down after ten minutes I genuinely wasn’t worried as I felt we were creating chances but we shooting wides, but were in the game.

“With the way the Thurles backs set-up the last day, we felt we didn’t move the ball around enough so we did put a focus on using the ball better.

“We have good hurlers across every line of the field so it was about getting them to express themselves more today.

“So, Kiladangan have Dan Breen safely in situ in Puckane this week for just the second time in their history, but they will create more history next month as they will represent Tipperary for the very first time in the Munster Senior Club Championship when they face Clonlara, and it will make the win that bit sweeter that they will now have a crack at provincial honours after the subdued nature of the 2020 county success, while also banishing so many bad days in the county final over the years.

“They have had a lot of bad days here,” O’Meara said about this group of Kiladangan players.

“They have left here a lot of times with their heads down but I do think that for themselves, not so much about winning a second title, but it was about winning this one, they had to win and had to get a result.

“They put the work in from the very first day I met them.

“For the guys here especially, they didn’t get the shot at it in 2020. It’s a team I am familiar with for sure but it was all about today for us.

“We didn’t look past three o’clock because it was just about getting the performance out of ourselves and thankfully they did,” O’Meara finished.