AUSTIN GLEESON ON...

The Liverpool connection

All my father’s side went to Liverpool for years. They went to I’d say 13 or 14 games a year back in the ’80s. He was in Heysel as well. He was actually in that side, he was up at the back and has the ticket at home. He’s Austin as well. I actually remember the date and everything, the first time I went [to Anfield] was the 20th of January 2007. They played Chelsea. Stephen Hunt had collided with Petr Cech and it was his first game back for them. Jermaine Pennant got a goal and then Dirk Kuyt got one. Pennant got a wonder goal – I was in the middle of the Kop and it was just unreal.

There was myself, my parents and my sister went over so it was a family ticket.

The one that got away… the 2017 All-Ireland final against Galway

A weird stat that I always think of is I think they went four-nil up after five minutes, and we played 75 minutes and lost by three, so there was 70 minutes of the game that we actually won.

You want to get to the Holy Grail, that’s the way it is and that’s the way it is for every team, no matter what stage you get to the year before. I suppose we know the hurt that was there last year, it was a tough couple of weeks afterwards.

No home venue with Walsh Park being redeveloped

Nobody is really giving us much of a chance because we have our four games away. Our home games this year, we lost two of them! The year before I think we lost them all, so I don’t think it has much of an effect on our mindset anyway

We want to finish first in Munster; get into a Munster final. We are after being in two Munster finals but lost both of them to Tipperary. So we want to get back there and get some silverware going into an All-Ireland semi-final. It would be massive for us to win Munster but, to be honest, the first game is like an All-Ireland final – we have to win it.

Whether it will be Derek McGrath’s last year in charge

Whether it is Derek’s last year or not we personally don’t know – he hasn’t told us. From my point of view, I really hope it’s not his last year. He brought me into the panel and I have played under no one else. We believe in everything he is doing.