Breen admits this is the sweetest of his three

By Shane Brophy

Michael Breen has been a prominent player on the Tipperary senior hurling team for eleven years now.

On the national stage, the Ballina clubman has become more recognisable this year because of his relationship with Irish running star Sharlene Mawdsley from nearby Newport; national newspapers in particular not slow about using their happy photos from recent Tipperary victories.

Why wouldn’t they, and now the 31-year-old Breen has a third All-Ireland senior winners medal to his credit, adding to those from 2016 and 2019, but he says this one is the sweetest of all.

“Yeah, this is really sweet,” he admitted.

“16-19, they were brilliant, but I'd never seen the colour and the excitement around the county.

“The supporters again today were unbelievable. I said it the last day, and I think I got mocked at, but that support was unbelievable.

“There was a lot of red, because the red does stand out, but our support has been unbelievable all year. And it will continue to be that way, I think, because the people are behind this team.”

Breen’s relocation to the full-back line under Liam Cahill, a position he won a minor All-Ireland in 2012 is one of the many reasons why the fortunes of the Tipperary team have turned around and he isn’t surprised they have managed to do so in a relatively short space of time.

“Well, I suppose it inspires you from last year's point of view,” he said of picking things up from last year.

“And yeah, it did inspire us, but you know what the narrative is going to be and twelve months ago, we were walking down the street and kind of you're ducking and diving from people because you don't want to have the conversations.

“And all it took was, as Liam said earlier, we'd to get into the trenches, we'd to get the work done and that was simply it. Like we were, we knew where we were last year, put it that way.”

In terms of Sunday’s final, Breen as part of a dominant Tipp rearguard that held Cork’s totemic full-forward line of Brian Hayes, Alan Connolly, and Patrick Horgan, whom Breen was detailed on, to just one point from play each.

“I think the goal before half-time really woke us up,” he reflected.

“We had been playing reasonably well in the first half; hit a couple of wides, I guess that we should have been nailing down.

“We were kind of happy at half-time, we still had possession and we had the opportunities to score, but just didn't finish them.

“But that second half, I think we just attacked everything; like everything was our last ball of the year and we just attacked it, and it came up trumps.

He added: “I wasn't surprised with the point of view that we spoke about minding the ball, we spoke about running it and working it out well. You know, and that's the way we train all year.

“Like last year, these are things we tried to do, but just didn't execute. And so to fully execute an All-Ireland Final against a team like Cork, when you're mining the ball, protecting the ball, you're running the ball out.

Like you control the game then and you're not worrying about chasing Cork because you have the ball, you're controlling it. And it's simple as that really.”