O’Brien pays tribute to his squad after tough battle
HE expected a massive battle and that’s excatly what he got. He expected Damien Redmond to send Ciaran Hyland back on Tommy Kelly and that’s exactly what he got. He expected his men’s fitness and their belief and class to pull them through the battle and that’s exactly what Casey O’Brien got.
‘A massive battle. We knew we were going to have a battle. We probably had it a little bit easy all the way through. The nearest any team got to us was Éire Óg with five points.
‘Of course it was (a concern), of course it was. We knew Arklow were unbeaten as well and that they were the best team we’d face this year so far. We knew coming in with the heavy ground, the whole lot, it was always going to be a battle. When you get to October here in Aughrim, it’s always going to be a battle.
‘But we’ve been in battles before. We talked about it. If it goes to a battle, we’ll be ok, and it turned out like that.
‘Maybe we should have been a little bit more ahead, we talked about missing an awful lot at halftime, we probably should have out the game away and we didn’t. But Arklow kept battling and they’re the sort of team that when they get a run at you, they’ll put you in trouble.
‘But I think our lads weathered the storm and I think our fitness shone through there at the end. It was going one way in the last five minutes. I thought in the last seven or eight minutes that Dean (Healy) was immense. He won dirty ball,’ he said.
Casey O’Brien had huge praise for all of his charges but his centre back came in for special words.
‘Ffrenchy is unbelievable. He’s as good a centre back as I’ve seen in a long time. There were some great battles all over the field. You have to give credit to Arklow and Damien Redmond. We had a feeling that he might put Ciaran Hyland back on Tommy (Kelly) and I thought the two of them had a great battle, I thought it was a massive battle. And Ciaran probably got the better of Tommy for long periods but when we needed a point Tommy pulled it out of the fire.
‘I can’t say much about our lads, our whole panel, they’re unbelievable, we haven’t done a two in a row since 1960, they won 59 and 60.
‘Great to win it for Mick Murphy and his family as well, they go back a long, long way,’ he added before fleeing to the safety of the dressing room as the October heavens opened above.