Conroy out to take his last chance
EOIN CONROY put the first of several harsh l essons to good use this week by keeping hi s head in his books. Tonight he will captain Wexford in the All-Ireland Under 21 Hurling Championship final against Limerick, and he has altered his approach from his build-up to last season’s decider.
Twelve months ago, Conroy decided to l eave no stone unturned in preparation for a final showdown with Clare.
On his own initiative, he pulled the plug on his studies at UCD early in the week so that he could get into the mental zone for marking the 2013 Hurler of the Year, Tony Kelly.
His confidence was high; in the semi-final he had been switched on to Galway’s main strike forward Pádraig Brehony, who had already nailed 1-5 in 20 minutes, and held him scoreless.
With the outside world locked away, and eyes only for Kelly, he was never more certain it would be his year.
‘I made the mistake and I said I’d rest up and I took the week off college, but this year I’m just going to get on with things because you can overthink things and get too anxious,’ he recalls.
It may have been that, or it may just have been Kelly’s undiluted brilliance — the Clare forward would snaffle seven points from play in a nine-point win — but all Conroy knows is that he had never been cut so deep.
‘I still haven’t watched the Clare game and I won’t watch it. I never will. On a personal level, it was the worst 60 minutes of my life. I thought I was prepared for Kelly but he was just something else. It was ridiculous what he is capable of.
‘Brehony made a lot of runs, but Kelly, he could stand and you’d think you’d have him but at the perfect time, just like that, he’s gone. That was the difference — his timing.
‘I was going to shake his hand and say “fair play to you” but the minute the whistle went he was gone so I just hit the ground.
‘I think he was being brought off for his man- of-the-match award, that was the biggest sickener of all.’
This is Conroy’s third and final season in the grade, each one marked by a Leinster medal, but his first one concluded with one of the biggest shocks in the competition’s history, l osing to Antrim in t he All- I r el and semi-final.
Tonight’s match represents a final chance, one the defender dare not let slip. ‘I have been there for three years and we still haven’t got the job done. That’s very much the mindset, that it’s a job that has to be done.
‘Maybe take a little bit of the emotion out of the game, don’t play the occasion. The last three years have been great with Leinsters, but there is a bigger picture and that’s the aim.
‘The big thing last year with us was we concentrated on Clare and who was going to pick up who. You have to do that to an extent but I think we went overboard on it.
‘There’s no doubt about it, last year we played the occasion instead of the game. We concentrated on stopping Clare rather than being Wexford; that was our biggest flaw. This year it’s about what we are going to bring to the game and make sure we perform.’
They have managed that so far, seeing off Kilkenny in the Lein- ster final, but even despite the trauma of two years ago their performance in beating Antrim by 12 points was disjointed.
They know they will have to go to another level to take down a Limerick team that ended Clare’s bid for a fourth All-Ireland title in a row, beating them in the Munster final in Ennis. But the Munster champions will face a Wexford team driven by a deep-rooted hurt and a captain who feels it more than most.
‘There was massive hurt right through the whole winter. Every training session, every running session and every gym session, it’s at the back of your mind. You want to get better and improve and fix that damage.’
WEXFORD: O O’Leary; S Donohue, L Ryan, E Conroy; J White, P Foley, J O’Connor; C Devitt, T Ffrench; A Kenny, K Foley, J Cash; C Dunbar, C McDonald, P Sutton.
LIMERICK: D McCarthy; S Finn, R English, M Casey; D Byrnes, B O’Connell, G Hegarty; D O’Donovan, P Ryan; R Lynch, C Lynch, D Dempsey; C Ryan, T Morrissey, B Nash.