'It was unreal. I was so happy at the end and I was just so proud' said Tipp minor captain O'Reilly

Brendan Maher, Willie Maher, John Kennedy, Joey McLoughney, Jimmy Doyle. Those are some of the names of Tipperary All-Ireland minor winning captains in whose mighty company, 2024 captain Cathal O’Reilly can now find himself after leading his side to the most incredible victories in Kilkenny last Saturday.

It would have been a hard sell to convince anyone that the young Holycross Ballycahill defender could surpass the brilliant occasion back in May when he managed a huge feat by lifting the John Doyle Cup - the very first use of the cup for the Munster minor champions - named after his legendary club mate after an enthralling contest and victory over Clare in Limerick.

But it is fair to say that he and his teammates managed to do just that and the young defender was a strong contender for man of the match on top of that, picking up Kilkenny danger man Jake Mullen who had pulled up plenty of trees in the Cats run to the All-Ireland final.

The impressive Colaiste Mhuire Thurles student gave a terrific speech when accepting the Irish Press Cup from GAA President Jarlath Burns. He spoke to media afterward about the endless preparation that went into him and his teammates over the year. He lauded the management team around the players for their efforts in getting them ready for the game.

“He (James Woodlock) knew that we had the legs in us. They (management) have been doing loads of training with us, especially for scenarios like this.

“We did eighteen versus fifteen or eighteen versus twelve in matches some of the time and any scenario that could happen today, the lads had us prepared for, so we were lucky in that sense.

“It was a hard-fought victory,” young O’Reilly said.

It is often forgotten that the minor grade is packed with 15 and 16-year-old players across the pitch and when that is taken in context, to be able to think on their feet and show so much maturity in the heat of battle being watched by a huge crowd on such a huge occasion cannot be underestimated.

O’Reilly recalled the moments after the sendings off of two of his teammates and felt there was no huge panic felt at the time and, if anything, it motivated them to up their game.

“After we went down the first man we were upset by it nearly but we were kind of motivated to drive it on,” he revealed.

“Then when we lost Darragh (O’Hora) as well it was just unlucky but we always say to each other that we won’t have any excuses at the end of it. We just said we’d drive it on and we never gave up and came out on the right side of it today, thank God.

Traditional man-on-man, six-on-six defending is almost a thing of the past the way modern hurling is played, but Tipperary had no choice but to front up to the challenge at the back and with no defensive comfort blanket with a spare man available, they stuck to their task and won some incredible duels over the 80 minutes.

“We hadn’t a spare man back there, so we had to push up on our men, so if we had to let them do the hurling, we weren’t going to have much hope coming out by the end,” said O’Reilly.

“So we decided to buck up now and it was time to drive on.”

A repeated soundbite from the aftermath chatter was the influence of the Tipperary supporters who travelled in force to Kilkenny on the day, and O’Reilly genuinely felt that the noise and bluster of the travelling Premier crowd gave them an extra percentage during the game, particularly when they were going in for a break at half-time and full-time.

“Yeah, it was phenomenal,” O’Reilly acknowledged.

“It was great to see it. We could hear them even go in for half-time and at the end of full-time, the crowd cheering us on and it really gave us more motivation to go out and them it for them as well yourself.

“It was unreal. I was so happy at the end and I was just so proud of all the lads as well.

“They never gave up and we stayed running and ran ourselves into the ground, that was what we had wanted, and if we did that we felt we would be happy with ourselves. 

“So to get the win is unreal,” he added.