Super 8s not fair claims Turlough
TURLOUGH O’BRIEN is loving Carlow’s great expectations.
Historic promotion from Division Four in the League has been followed in quick succession by emphatic Leinster Championship wins over Louth and Kildare, and now a provincial semi-final against Laois beckons.
From a position of trying to convince players they were good enough to compete at a high level, suddenly the passionate O’brien is having to manage expectations. It’s a situation he’s revelling in.
“I think it’s great,” beamed the Carlow supremo. “Expectations are great.
“The expectation up to now as that we’d lose, and we always fulfilled it to the letter of the law. We would lose.
“Kerry, Kilkenny, they always expect to win. Tyrone expect to win. And even when they’re not going well, they’re still able to grind out results.
“And we’re kind of getting a mindset now that we kind of expect to win.
“Coming out of the League with the wins – look, we know we can compete with everybody up to maybe the top four teams in the country, that we’ll give them a really stern test and maybe, who knows where that might take us.
“We’re not making any predictions about results because it’s a fool’s game.
“But no-one will beat Carlow easily this year – I’ll guarantee you that.”
After a breakthrough year in 2017, the concern outside of the Carlow camp was that they wouldn’t be able to maintain that level of progress. And while promotion from Division Four was achieved, O’brien then lost star man Brendan Murphy, who is heading to the US for part of the summer.
Was he surprised himself that his CARLOW boss Turlough O’brien believes the League should be run off alongside Championship – and reckons the Super Eights is an elitist affair.
As things stand, Carlow are in with a shout of making the new All-ireland quarterfinal format but O’brien (above) is no fan of it. “The counties with very strong panels have a huge advantage over those games because you’re going to pick up injuries, suspensions,” team have kicked on? “I wouldn’t be,” stressed O’brien.
“If you think of the mentality of our players who have suffered, those 10 or 12 players that played in a Leinster minor final and the disappointments that they have had for the next eight years, and now they’re in a place where they could dream of.
“Jesus, they’re lapping it up. They want to see what they can now (achieve).
“The young lads coming in are feeding off that as well, and the guys are really good mentors to the young guys, encouraging. “I think Carlow are showing now that a team that is well organised, structured and prepared can compete – and that’s the way it’s worked out.
“The players, too, have to have belief that you can achieve something with your county.”
Jesus, they’re lapping it up, they want to see what they can do..
he said. “We’ve seen the way the TV coverage has been allocated, Super 8s is getting all the coverage.
“It’s very disappointing the provincial
Championships have been ignored. The football Championships have been ignored.
“It’s a terrible disservice to all those counties. I don’t think it’ll ever end because there’s people driving this notion because they want the top eight teams playing all the time.
“They want big days in Croke Park. That’s driving it – they want TV audiences. I don’t think people are listening to grassroots.
“My latest theory is that we should move the league into the summer, play it alongside the Championship so that we end up maybe with League semi-finals being played between quarterfinals and semi-finals of the Championship.
“I think we’d have a brilliant competition. It’s going to take really radical thinking.”