“We won nothing last week. You win next Sunday”

NIALL O’Callaghan comes with a reputation as being a bit of a funny man, the joker in the pack, the Drew ‘Bundini’ Brown of whatever group or team he’s involved in. Affectionately known as ‘Botty’, he has been throwing his lot in with sporting teams around Killarney and Kerry for more years than he can care to remember: basketball teams in the town, as ‘kit man’ for the Kerry senior footballers for much of the last decade, and, of course, his beloved Dr Crokes.

Never one to be short of a quip or an uplifting pep talk to a young player, O’Callaghan might be a messer on the surface but underneath the light veneer he’s deadly serious about his football.

There has been no shortage of a brains trust on the Dr Crokes sideline over the last few seasons - Pat O’Shea, Harry O’Neill, Eddie ‘Tatler’ O’Sullivan and Vince Casey - but O’Callaghan brings plenty of football nous and wise counsel too. Take it so that he looks ahead to

Sunday’s

Munster

Club Final against

Miltown with an informed and measured eye.

At 1/20 favourites to reclaim the provincial title next Sunday it could be easy to dismiss the expected lines of ‘a hard game’ and ‘taking nothing for granted’ coming out of the Crokes camp as platitudes that have to be uttered, but O’Callaghan sets the record straight fairly emphatically. “Last year we probably went into the game - and it was a Munster Club Final - against Nemo Rangers a little bit complacent. We were a very tired team just hoping to get over the line. We probably thought ‘we’ll show up, we’ll get the win and we’ll get our break’ and instead we got our ass handed to us. We didn’t do it right,” he reminds us of how the Crokes lost their Munster and All-Ireland titles this time 12 months ago.

“We’ve had games against Cratloe, against The Nire, Kilmurry-Ibrickane. We know that in Munster you can’t just rock up and think you’re going to win. What we know of Miltown-Malbay from watching the videos is that they’re a very structured team, they work very hard, they’re tenacious in the tackle. They’ve a system and they play it very well, they’ve a very good sweeper inside who plays it really well. And if we don’t match that intensity and work-rate we’re going to have our ass handed to us again,” he says.

Of course, Dr Crokes are being talked up to coast to another Munster title - what would be their fifth this decade - by virtue of a 21-point win over Cork’s St Finbarrs and a 16-point win over Moyle Rovers in the campaign so far, and while O’Callaghan appreciates how that shapes people’s thinking he, and the Crokes, aren’t getting carried away.

“There’s always room for improvement. We don’t take much from the Barrs game to be honest other than we won the game. We did play nice football but let’s be honest, the Barrs didn’t show up on the day,” he says. “We’d expect something like that performance every week and we’d expect that next Sunday but you still have to show up and work hard at what you’re good and then hopefully that performance will come from that. We’re too long around to be thinking we’ve made it now.

“There is no complacency in the camp. If anyone showed up this week with any bit of complacency at all you were told in front of the group, that’s the way it is. And the group would call him out. There’s good leadership in the group and we’re lucky that we’ve Brian Looney, Kieran O’Leary, Johnny Buckley, Daithi Casey, they’re leaders. They you’ve Colm Cooper coming out and making the hairs stand on the top of your head. It’s a special time for a special team and we’re enjoying it,”the team selector says.

“I think we’re in a better place now. We’re fresh, we’re getting stronger as the games have gone on in the championship. We set a standard (against St Finbarrs) that people say was fabulous football, and it was, but we won nothing last Sunday (week). You win next Sunday, and I’d rather win next Sunday by a point and barely just get over the line and have a cup in the trophy cabinet, than lose next Sunday say ‘but didn’t we play well against the Barrs’.

“We’re going to have to be on top top form on Sunday. After all it’s a Munster Club Final, at the end of the day (Miltown-Malbay) have to be a good team. If they get all the way to a Munster Final I don’t care what county you’re from it’s a Munster Final and you have a chance. If you’re beaten