Ormond is living the dream
By Shane Brophy
Andrew Ormond is making senior inter-county hurling look very easy.
The 25-year-old forward was always a player with great potential, but one wondered did the modern game suit his skillset.
He is not the biggest player in the world, but is an elusive one with a low centre of gravity which makes him difficult to tie down. You’d class him as a similar type of player to Graeme Mulcahy who was so effective for Limerick at his bes.
Tipperary were crying out for a player to bring something different to the attack, to compliment the talent that is there and he has certainly stepped up to the plate in recent games with two official man of the match awards against Waterford (0-2) and Galway (0-5), 2-1 from play in his championship debut against Clare, and three points from play against Laois.
“Maybe I did have to wait a little bit longer than other players,” said the under 20 All-Ireland winner in 2019.
“I am 25, some lads make it when they are 18 or 19 but look, playing for Tipperary is something I always wanted to do. It’s my dream, I was never going to give up on it.”
He added: “All it is, is three or four good matches in a row.
“I am old enough and wise enough to know that it might not happen like this for me every time and I am going to have to work hard like everyone else when it happens.
“The scores are coming for me at the moment but there was a spread of scorers today.”
At times, Tipp looked on a different level to Galway, but there was enough in the performance to be improved on going forward.
“The cliché is that quarter finals are for winning. We are in the semi-final now and that will be the same,” Ormond added.
“We were a little bit sloppy towards the end and have a little bit to work on.
“They had a few goal chances near the end and would be a little disappointed with that, but we have two weeks to work on things like that and push it on for the seventy minutes in the semi-final.”
Ormond was surprised to learn that it is Kilkenny that he and his teammates will be facing in the All-Ireland semi-final and is looking forward to taking his talents out onto the Croke Park pitch for the first time on Sunday week.
“After coming third in Munster, that was the goal to get back to Croke Park,” Ormond revealed.
“It’s crazy we haven’t been there since 2019 so we are looking forward to that now in two weeks’ time.
“Kilkenny v Tipp games, I don’t need to explain that to anybody, so it won’t require any motivation for us. We will be all guns blazing and they will be the same.”