By John Harrington

Colin O’Riordan is back in Australia and in the middle of his AFL pre-season with the Sydney Swans, but you can’t take the Tipperary out of the man.

On Monday night he had a vivid dream he was playing for the Premier County footballers again, and woke with a smile on his face.

His subconscious is still feeding off the deep satisfaction of beating Cork in the 2020 Munster Senior Football Final, and in his waking hours O’Riordan is just as happy to let his mind wander back to that dramatic day in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

As he says himself, the bad times will chew you up plenty, so you might as well enjoy life’s highs as much as you can when they come along.

Tipperary supporters will surely hope the prodigal son’s return wasn’t just a temporary one.

So what are the chances? Will we see O’Riordan in the blue and gold again in the not too distant future?

“I don't think I've closed the book yet, I hope I haven't anyway,” he says.

“But, at the same time, I have an opportunity here. I have only one year left on my contract in Sydney as well and you have to be realistic about that as well.

“The chips are down for me and this year is going to be a big year and that's the reality. There's no point sugar-coating it and saying you're going to be here for another ten years when you're only contracted for one.

“So you have to be realistic, but at the same time you have to be ambitious and think you're going to be here for five more years.

“In the back of my mind I'm thinking I really want to succeed at this game and prove people wrong who thought you couldn't do it. You just want to have a real crack at it and I have a real desire to succeed with the club and that's the biggest thing for me. I just want to play over here for as long as I can.

“It's not a case that I'll never put on the Tipp jersey again, but I'll probably give this the best opportunity I can while I'm here.”

You get the feeling he certainly won’t be happy to allow the All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Mayo be the last chapter of his Tipperary career.

Just over two months on, the emotions are still raw, and the scale of the defeat especially rankles.

“I just remember coming off the pitch and all I could think of was ‘Jesus, we’ve let down a lot of people here.’ We were genuinely embarrassed, that’s the only way I could describe it.

“There is a lot of hurt coming from the group with regard to that. We had such a high against Cork and such a low against Mayo. We were pretty much gone out of the game by half-time and I think there is a burning desire to succeed again because of that.

“That is the vibe I am getting from the group and from chatting to a few of the lads they feel like they want to push on. They are not content settling with where we are at.”

Much the same sentiment is true for O’Riordan in Australia where his AFL career has been something of a slow burner so far.

It looked like he was ready to really establish himself 2019 when he made 12 appearances, but he didn’t quite build on that as much as he would have hoped in the 2020 season when he made eight first-team appearances.

By his own admission he found the quarantine hubs the players had to sign up for a difficult experience and, as he looks ahead to the 2021 season, top of his priority list is to simply start enjoying his football again.

“I will probably put a few different things in place this year just around simple things like the enjoyment factor that we could not get last year,” he says.

“Everyone was a bit caught up and I probably did not enjoy last year as much as I should whether that was to do with the year we just had but at the same time that is a simple thing but I play my best football when I am enjoying it.

“If I am not enjoying it then I probably know it is not for me. In the four years previous to that I loved every second of it so the biggest thing for me is getting the enjoyment factor back.

“I am not saying it is not there but because of last year it was probably hampered a bit. It is just having that love for it again and going out in every game trying as hard as I can but putting a few stepping stones in place is the biggest thing for me to getting to where you are talking about.

“I would hope it will be a big season but who knows what will happen? As long as it is not shut down I will have a red-hot crack at it.”

He knows too that if he doesn’t make a positive impression with the Swans in 2021 it might well be his last season with them and maybe even his last ever in the AFL.

That brings its own pressure, but no-one will be demanding anything from O’Riordan that he doesn’t already demand from himself.

“You’d be pretty naive or pretty stupid if you didn’t think that it wouldn’t bring added pressure but I’m a hard critic of myself anyway," he says. That’s probably the biggest pressure I have, my own pressure that I set on myself and the targets I want to achieve myself.

“Whether I have one year or four or five years, my aim every week is to go out and give it as much as I can regardless of what the circumstance are.

“A lot of people would think because you’ve a year (left on your contract), things change and you have to try and invent something, but to me that’s probably not the case.

“It does create a bit of uncertainty about the rest of your future off the field but on the field I can’t see it changing too much. I’ve been there long enough now that if I can bring my game to another level and slowly build again, I’ll be pretty happy within myself and I know that I can put my head on the pillow knowing I had done everything I could.”

Colin O'Riordan was speaking at the launch of Sports Physio Ireland’s new Athletic Development App for GAA Club Teams. Click the link below to register for your free session.

https://sportsphysioireland.com/online-fitness-platform/athletic-development/