O'Brien not reflecting on the past ahead of semi-final

By Joe Scully

For Tipperary corner forward and top scorer in the All-Ireland championship, delight was the main emotion for Grace O’Brien after her sides victory over Kilkenny as they qualified for yet another semi-final meeting against Galway in three weeks’ time.

“Delighted to get over the line, it was a difficult test for us as we knew it would be coming up here against Kilkenny,” she began.

“We were quite resilient there. Kilkenny had a lot of momentum coming towards the end of normal time and at the start of extra time, so to pull through, we are just over the moon and I’m so proud of the girls.

“We probably didn’t perform well in the first half, we just needed to trust ourselves a bit more.

“We were probably delivering the ball a little too early, and there were a lot of 50/50 balls coming in and their sweeper mopped up quite a lot of them, but when we started to get on the front foot and started breaking tackles, we were able to deliver better balls in and you saw us reaping the rewards in the forwards.”

The Nenagh Éire Óg sharpshooter was also full of praise for her teammate and goalkeeper Laura Leenane, after she pulled off a massive penalty save in extra time which played a crucial role in her sides victory.

“To be honest, the way Laura has been performing in training, I backed her to be able to save it, and she pulled off an incredible save,” she said,

“She’s one of the best shot stoppers, I’ve ever seen.“To be thrown into the goal last year for the juniors and perform so well, she is top class, and I am just so proud today, she pulled it out of the bag for us.”

O’Brien is now looking forward to playing in another semi-final but is not going to worry about previous years or previous games, and is planning on taking this game on its merits and is hoping the team can take learnings from the Kilkenny game with them.

“Every day we go out it has to be a different mindset, we can’t be thinking of what went on in the past,” she said of losing six successive semi-finals.

“We’re just going into it as a new game against new opposition and we’re not going to bring any baggage from previous years.

“We will hopefully learn a lot about ourselves after today.

“We kind of had an uphill trajectory since the Cork game, and had been performing very well, scoring quite a lot, but Kilkenny are a class team and they showed us the standards we have to get to.

“We’re going to learn a lot from today and hopefully be a lot better in three weeks’ time.

“Every time we go out, we’re going to learn a lot about ourselves, and for the Galway game we are definitely going to have to up the intensity. We can’t be going out of the game for long periods like we did today and except to win it the next day.

“But look, really looking forward to the challenge ahead and a lot of improvements to be made.”