Tipp coach Paddy Christie reconnecting with his roots
In the 1990's when yours truly was training on various Lorrha underage hurling teams, each summer without fail, I would arrive at training and there would be this chap none of us knew, training on his own with a football.
By Shane Brophy
Now a Gaelic football wouldn’t be an alien item in Lorrha but at that time of the year you wouldn’t see one and it was very strange altogether but you couldn’t be but impressed seeing this chap training with only himself for company.
That chap proved to be Paddy Christie, former Dublin senior footballer and current Tipperary senior coach whose Premier County roots are strong through the Lower Ormond parish and the Sherlock family, from where John and the late Eamonn were great stalwarts of the club in the 80’s and 90’s when the club were strong in senior hurling.
Those family tentacles continued through their sisters also when they moved to Dublin with Gertrude, mother of former Dublin senior hurler Joey Boland, and Kathleen, who is Paddy Christie’s mother.
And it was that strong Tipperary heritage through his family that made the approach from David Power to come on board as a coach of the county’s senior footballers late last year just too difficult to turn down.
“There is a part of my involvement with Tipperary was to do with that side of things,” Christie admitted.
“My mother is from Lorrha which is a hurling stronghold and when they saw me down there with a football when I was fourteen or fifteen, they used to wonder, who was the guy with the football?
“I always had a thing for Tipperary and used to enjoy watching them play, both the footballers and the hurlers. I spent a lot of my summers there as a young lad and had a very soft spot for them.”
Christie lived in and played his football for Ballymun Kickhams, who wouldn’t have been a traditional giant in the club game at the time, compared to the other North side clubs such as St Vincent’s and Na Fianna.
However, all that has changed with Christie, who won 3 Leinster titles with Dublin in his twelve year inter-county career from 1996 to 2007, to the forefront of underage development in the club as Ballymun have developed into a powerhouse in Dublin, winning a club All-Ireland in 2012, as well as county titles in 2011 and 2020, and who provide Philly McMahon, John Small, James McCarthy, Dean Rock, Paddy Small and goalkeeper Evan Comerford to the current all-conquering Dublin panel.
Indeed, the blueprint of what was done at club level in Ballymun was what also made the Tipperary challenge appealing.
“I would have seen a lot of parallels between Ballymun and Tipperary footballers and I know you might laugh at that socio-economically and there is a big difference there, but in the more core things such as being under-achievers, not high profile, difficulties in different areas, small pool of players, a lot of those things Ballymun were the very same a long time ago and things changed and the culture changed and that’s what you would like to see with Tipperary,” he explained.
Christie was also very familiar with many of the Tipperary players through games with Dublin minor teams, many of whom played against Tipperary in challenge games down through the years.
“What I saw in the last few years that they had potential and they had good players coming through the system but for whatever reason it didn’t happen,” Christie added.
“The selling point David (Power) had for me was, there is something there to work with and we could do something. It won’t happen straight away, but something will happen long term if we put in the work. Funnily enough it happened straight away winning a Munster championship in the first year is incredible.
“It is a big thing for me to help somebody to get up another level or two.
“Coming back to Ballymun Kickhams, we were in such a mess at underage and the club was folding and that was how bad things were.
“Tipperary weren’t in that category at all but there was still an element for me of, could I help these guys, or can I do something small? I am one of many people on the management who have made some kind of contribution but from my point of view it was really alluring for me to take these guys and have a little bit of input that might help them push on a bit and that they Philip Austin’s and the Brian Fox’s, even the Evan Comerford’s who is no longer an eighteen-year-old, these guys would have some silverware and they would have their day in the sun, that was a big thing for me.”
The Tipperary panel have another piece of silverware in the form of a Munster senior title from last month, and in many other counties ending an 85-year wait for success would be enough for it to be a successful year but Christie has been hugely impressed by the players mentality since the victory over Cork.
“I was impressed in the first session back as normally there is a lot of giddiness which is understandable,” he continued.
“I remember when we won a Leinster Championship in 2002 (with Dublin) and I know you might throw your eyes up to heaven and say, big deal, but in 2002 a Leinster championship was an All-Ireland for Dublin as we had lost three finals in a row.
“I remember the week after winning that final and we were trying to keep a lid on things as it just went nuts. There was loads of laughing and fooling around and it was very hard to get back into the real world. We played Donegal in an All-Ireland quarter final and we really struggled (in the drawn game) but played well in the replay and blew them away, but in the first game we just about got a draw and a lot of that was due to the fact we couldn’t reset as it was such a big deal to crawl over the finish line the way we did against Kildare.
“What I was really impressed with Tipperary during last week was how they were quite mature about it. Needless to say they enjoyed the performance against Cork and people were delighted, but on Wednesday night there were jerseys to get signed and a few little pieces to be done but we just got back onto the training field and back to business fairly quickly.
“The lads on the so-called ‘B’ team, numbers 16-35, they really drove it on which impressed me. They wanted to push things on and that is where you get your strength from if you have a strong bench that are pushing you in training and in matches where you need to get over the finish line. That’s what you are depending on and is what I am most impressed with the fact the game (Munster Final) is finished with now and for those lads while it is a huge deal to have beaten Cork, there is no mention of the Cork game now, it’s all about Mayo.”
It has been a notable characteristic of this group of Tipperary players, particularly since their minor days, they get phased by very little and revel in the big occasion. The bigger the opponent the better they tend to perform, and that mentality is something that all Tipperary people have when it comes to GAA Christie feels.
“Some people might call it a Tipperary mentality across the board,” he laughed.
“Maybe it comes from the hurlers that they have that confidence, and it’s not cockiness or arrogance at all, far from it.
“I got it from the first week I was in there in training with the lads and in the first meetings with the management when I didn’t know anyone or where I was, I detected that sort of belief, not over-bearing or over-confident, but they did think they could do something. Even in the dark days we were struggling in the National League and things were going wrong, they came out the next day thinking they would win again.
“The players have a quiet confidence all the time and where it comes from I don’t know, but it maybe is a county thing but they always think they can pull something out of the hat and the bigger the occasion the more these fellas come together.
“While Cork was daunting last week and you are playing that quality of opposition in their own home patch, okay there were no fans there but it still was travelling down to Pairc Ui Chaoimh, and it was a big day and they really embraced the challenge and didn’t need a lot of motivation or speeches, they did it themselves.”