John O Dwyer
By John Harrington
It might have been a flawed performance, but the result was all that mattered as far as John ‘Bubbles’ O’Dwyer was concerned after Tipperary’s All-Ireland SHC Quarter-Final victory over Clare yesterday.
The classy corner-forward said he was “absolutely delighted” to be looking forward to an All-Ireland semi-final and “back where we want to be”.
Tipp made hard work of it as they saw a lead that once stood at seven points cut down to just one with four minutes of normal time remaining.
They showed a lot of bottle to then come with a late surge to win the game, and O’Dwyer claimed he never doubted they would.
“No, not really,” he said. “The confidence we have in the group is absolutely second to none. When you have players like Paudie Maher back there and Ronan, you know that we’re going to come good again.
“I think there at one stage, Paudie came down with an unbelievable catch and Brendan Maher put over a 90-yard free. Them boys have been around the block a long time and it shows the character of the squad.
“No matter who you play, every team is going to get their purple patch in a game. You just try to limit the amount of scores they get as much as you can and I think they reeled off six in a row, and we can back to get four or five.
“That shows good character in the team and good character in the squad that we can come back and stay driving forward.”
O’Dwyer didn’t agree with the suggestion that Tipperary’s confidence was badly hit by that heavy defeat to Galway in the League Final and is only now returning.
“No, you lose games and win games,” he said. “A lot of people might say ‘the manner of the defeat’ but we just put our heads down and worked hard again inside in training, and we got back on track.
“That’s three games on the trot we’re after winning and two more games now, and we’re back where we want to be.”
Tipperary will now play either Galway or Cork in the All-Ireland semi-final, and O’Dwyer isn’t fussy about who their opponent is.
“Ah, I don’t think it makes much of a difference,” he said. “Cork are Munster champions; Galway are Leinster champions, and deservedly so.
“So, no matter who you get, and whether it’s two weeks or three weeks, you’re going to get a serious game. Look, when we know our opposition, we’ll knuckle down and train hard again.”
