Nenagh’s Captain fantastic O’Farrell lauds team ethic

By Shane Brophy

A number of years ago, a decision was made to remove the winning minor captain from making a speech after the All-Ireland final.

Whether it was the decision to take those games out of Croke Park which saw its return as Tipperary captain Sam O’Farrell provided a wonderful exclamation point on a great day for the county on Sunday with an excellent address to his team and their jubilant supporters.

“Today is about all the lads, and we have said that all year, the team is the team,” he said.

“The first day it was Damien Corbett who took the acclaim, Tom Delaney the next but everyone stood up a different day and towards the end it was a team effort.”

Unlike the Munster final where the Nenagh Eire Og clubman’s red card instigated the comeback, he was to the fore in this comeback here and understood what his teammate Damien Corbett was feeling following his sending off, which inadvertently burst Tipp into life.

“We pushed up the field more and in fairness to Damien I don’t think we has given away a free all year. That was me in the Munster Final.

“We pushed up and attacked more. It could have been the winning of the game, that red card certainly was the changing point.

“We started the second half well and got a few scores, but they seemed to be able to keep us as arm’s length. They hadn’t conceded a goal all year and it took until the 63rd minute for us to break them down and hats off to them they are a serious team, but there are goals in our team, and we knew we had to find one to win them.”

Indeed, O’Farrell had pushed forward into the square for the late free which Paddy McCormack got the vital touch to, from the excellent delivery by sub Paddy Phelan.

“I thought he’d do something like Mikey Kiely did for UL and drill it and see what happens,” O’Farrell admitted.

“Both Paddy’s have a bit of flair between them, no two better people you’d want in that situation.”

Indeed, Paddy McCormack has added his name to the legends of Borris-Ileigh All-Ireland winners with his last gap intervention

“It was a loopy high ball in, and I got a good one-handed flick, and it went in thank god,” McCormack said.

“They had all the bodies there and we had to get over all those men and it was a great ball in, right to the edge of the small square and I got the flick on it.

“We never make it easy on ourselves. We always bring it down to the wire. It is unbelievable in front of the biggest crowd I have played in front of.”