TRIBE EAMON

O’shea in Galway corner against his home county

A FEW weeks before Christmas a text landed on Darragh Egan’s phone from, of all places, The Gabba in Brisbane.

In seeing out the last of his duties before retiring as a professor of economics at University of Galway, Eamon O’shea was required to travel to Australia and, while there, decided to take in a cricket team in training.

Although he was involved with Tipperary as recently as 2021 alongside Egan, he was keen to make up whatever ground he had missed — and get ahead of the posse.

“He was talking about technique and how we need to focus a bit more on coaching the technique in hurling and so on, looking at cricket players and how they approach the ball and what their footwork is like,”says Egan.

Constantly

“His brain is in overdrive, constantly thinking about hurling and imparting that knowledge on any player, whether it’s Galway, Tipperary, whoever, it’s going to benefit the team he’s involved with.”

Although Egan points out that O’shea “runs black and white for Kilruane first of all and then he runs blue and gold for Tipperary”,

it was probably inevitable that he would get involved with Galway at some point.

Just retired, a long-time resident in Salthill and now seeing his son, Donal, come to the fore with the county team, it was probably now or never.

“From his front door you could puck a ball down to the goals in Pearse Stadium, that’s how close he lives to the stadium.

“He had a very high-powered job and he was a very significant member of the economics department in NUI Galway so he’s retired and he knew that was on the horizon and his appetite to deal in high level hurling is second to none.

Coaching

“I remember being on the line down in Moyle Rovers when I was over Tipp 16s. Eamon had a bit-part involvement in the Galway 16s at that time and Donal was on the squad so following that line of coaching, it was probably inevitable that he’d