O’Brien has given everything to the Tipperary Footballing cause
By Thomas Conway
With his powerful 6-foot 4-inch frame and shrewd in-game intelligence, Steven O’Brien is easy to identify on any sports field.
You can pick him out in an instant - the towering catches, the surging runs, the uncanny ability to read the play ten seconds before everyone else. O’Brien stands out.
He has done so in a Gaelic games context for as long as anybody can remember, but even beyond sport, the Ballina man has always had something unique about him. John Gleeson, his former teacher and coach, noticed it from an early age.
“He stood out a mile away as a natural leader, in everything he did really,” John says.
“He had that kind of aura about him, those kinds of leadership qualities. And then what he also had was huge belief in himself, regardless of who he was playing, or who was marking him, or what the team was - unbelievable belief in himself.”
That belief, that irrepressible spirit, has propelled the 31-year-old to many titles and individual honours that it would be impossible to list them all.
Among the ones that stand out are the 2011 All-Ireland minor football title, in which Tipp upset the odds to overturn a hotly fancied Dublin outfit, and of course Tipperary’s epic 2020 Munster senior final triumph over Cork, widely regarded as one of Tipp football’s greatest days.
But his success extends beyond just football. O’Brien has All-Ireland minor and senior hurling medals, a Croke Cup with Nenagh CBS, and a coveted county intermediate hurling crown with Ballina.
Back on the football side of things, his cabinet also contains a Sigerson Cup medal from his days with DCU, and of course those recent county junior and intermediate football titles with Ballina.
“You would be hard-pressed to find someone who has won as much in terms of both codes. I just think it’s incredible what he has won. There’s very little he actually hasn’t won,” Gleeson added.
Ability to read the game
Always athletic and phenomenally powerful, Steven was, John says, part of the backbone of every underage Ballina side he was on, alongside Mikey Breen.
Sporting success is never inevitable and prodigious underage talent does not always translate to adult level. With Steven, however, there was a sense from very early on that this guy had what it takes.
After witnessing the young Ballina man thunder a sideline over the bar Maurice Fitzgerald-style in an underage game once, a friend of John’s came up to him and said straight out what many people were thinking at the time: “He’ll definitely play for Tipp.”
Athleticism and ability are two crucial dimensions of any inter-county player, but there is a third aspect that only truly elite players have - tactical intelligence. Steven possesses it in spades, John contends, recalling an interaction he had with the midfielder a number of years ago.
“Back when he was 20 or 21, I think he told me that ‘when I play, I try to make two of myself - one guy that’s on the ball, and the other guy that’s twenty metres above the field looking at the game’. And he’s had that ability to read the game since he was very young.”
Of the many managers under whom O’Brien played during the course of his career so far, it’s probably fair to see that none has been more influential or successful than David Power.
The current Tipp ladies' boss was the architect behind that 2011 All-Ireland minor championship success in Croke Park. Nine years later he was on the sidelines when Tipp secured their first Munster title in 85 years in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.
Like John, David lauds Steven’s general ability, describing him as “a serious footballer” who “has it all” in terms of kicking and fielding. Steven, he says, is also “very good with younger players and integrating them into the set-up.”
He also points out that O’Brien hails from a part of the county primarily associated with hurling and suggests that the Ballina man has helped to significantly elevate the profile of football in the area.
“For a man that has come from North Tipperary, where club football wouldn’t be played as much, his level of ability is actually incredible, to be honest,” Power says.
Inherent passion for football
Sometimes it can be easy to forget that O’Brien is also an elite quality hurler.
His footballing prowess tends to overshadow his ability with the small ball, but there is a parallel reality in which O’Brien pursued hurling instead of football. Who knows where that might have led, but what a loss he would have been to the senior footballers.
Would they have won that Munster title without him?
John rates Steven as “an inter-county level hurler” who never quite exhausted his potential. Ultimately, he went another route, because his love for football was greater.
“He had a high ceiling as a hurler, and he probably never reached it. But I felt for the guy because his passion was always football, he said.
“He knew in his heart that he could play at the highest level as a footballer. And he felt similarly for hurling, but his passion, his inherent passion, was football.
And he was probably a little bit better at it. Not much, but just a little bit, and that was enough then.”
O’Brien’s story is not yet fully written. He has been plagued by injury in recent years, but he remains one of Tipp football’s most potent weapons.
As the seniors enter a new phase under Niall Fitzgerald, Steven is the perfect man to help nurture a largely youthful squad. He is and always has been a leader. And a great person, too.