‘Greene’ shoots in Éire Óg’s bid to end famine
Éire Óg manager Brendan Greene (second from left) alongside Dave Conlon, chairperson and coach; Niall Daly, coach, and Brendan Crawley at training in Tubber, County Offaly, ahead of Sunday's intermediate football championship final against Tulsk Lord Edwards at King and Moffatt Dr. Hyde Park. Pictures: Gerard O'Loughlin
When it’s put to Brendan Greene about the impact of an intermediate football title in Éire Óg — a first in 33 years — he jokes that the players, management and local community would “find a way to cope with it.”
When pressed further, he admits that having the Jamesie Murray Cup in West Roscommon would be “unimaginable”, given the club’s relationship with the championship up until their appearance in the 2022 final.
“Up until then, it was about trying to avoid the drop,” he outlined.
“But these players are a bit different to previous Éire Óg teams. We haven’t played any other grade of football, apart from intermediate, for over 30 years. We’ve never gone down, so that’s one of the reasons we haven’t won anything.
“One of the things that attracted me to them is that there is a huge discipline in them. There’s discipline on the field and off the field.
“There’s also a huge eagerness to learn. That combination, with the coaches we’ve brought in, is a very symbiotic thing. You give, you get, and hopefully the graph goes up,” he explained.
The recent flirtations with county finals haven’t yielded any meaningful relationship with silverware, but Greene — in his second year as manager — is keen to highlight that the team have been close.
“We’ve been in finals that haven’t gone our way, but we were never really demolished in any of them.
“You’d be thinking that, on the law of averages, you’ll win one some time. So, from that point of view, you’d be hopeful, but sport doesn’t always work out like that.
“It’s the first year that we’ve come into the final with any sort of senior league experience. We found the O’Rourke Cup challenging for a variety of different reasons but, at the same time, being exposed to that level of football causes you to up your standards,” he remarked.
Relegation back to the O’Gara Cup was followed by Fuery inflicting a 0-20 to 1-7 loss in the opening round of the championship. It was time to recalibrate.
“We’ve played well in the last couple of games but the first one (against Fuerty) wasn’t one to be writing home about. It was similar to Mayo’s encounter in the championship (when they lost to Roscommon). It wasn’t pleasant.
“We had beaten Fuerty last year but they had given us a very good second half after we made a very good start. It wasn’t to be unexpected, but it was humbling enough.
“You don’t think that it’s a blessing in disguise at the time, but when you look back in the rearview mirror, it was. We were coming in with senior league experience, but what did it count for?
“We felt it wasn’t just over one game, senior league football was going to be useful over a lot of games. We feel as if we’re coming into this final on an equal footing because, mostly, the team that win the intermediate championship have some relationship with senior (league) football.”
Leaving nothing to chance, however, the addition of Niall Daly and John Rogers to the management ticket has changed the goalposts in Greene’s eyes.
“It has been dramatic. When you look at the way these lads work, it’s a level that I wouldn’t have seen in club football before, and I’ve been around the block a lot. It’s pretty forensic — that’s the word I’d use.”
Given Pearses journey before they won the club’s first senior championship in 2019, one can understand why Niall Daly was scouted over his possible involvement to help get Éire Óg over the line.
“I talked to Niall about that at the very beginning. They weren’t shy when it came to getting to finals. It was about making the breakthrough. So that’s something we’re going to hone in on between now on the final because you can’t talk about that sort of stuff before semi-finals or quarter-finals.”
In previous deciders, St. Dominic’s, Castlerea St. Kevin’s and Strokestown have ensured that Éire Óg’s hopes and dreams have gone up in smoke, and Greene sees Sunday’s opponents as another one of those teams that have the potential to scupper his side’s ambitions once more.
“Since I’ve been here, I think that I’ve played Tulsk four times, and it has been basically 4-0 to them. They’re coming from a really strong base of senior football. We think that one season is a help, but what is it like to have played multiple seasons?
“They obviously know how to win this championship, having won it in 2019. They have winners in their group. They gave us quite a trimming in an O’Gara Cup final last year.
“But we’re not going in without hope. In a funny sort of way, you’re thinking that when you get to all these finals, previous experiences might be a help to us.
“We’ve made our mistakes, so the aim is not to make them again,” he concluded.
