O'Brien sets sight on big bonus win for Tullamore after great recovery from horrific, freak injury

TWO years ago as he recovered from a horrific freak double injury, Kevin O'Brien's football career looked to be done and dusted and he certainly never envisaged playing in any more Offaly county finals in his beloved O'Connor Park.

Now 35 years of age, O'Brien was a day short of his 33rd birthday when he lined out against St Brigid's in a Division 3 league semi-final in 2024.

A GAA reporter with the online forum for The 42 for several years, O'Brien wrote an excellent biography of the Dooley brothers, Joe, Billy and Johnny, which was published in 2022. Between that and the weekly grind of matches every weekend, the pressure of instant reports online after the whistle, he burned out and took a year out in 2023 to travel Australia.

He came back in 2024 and returned to the Tullamore senior football team. In his 30s and living in Dublin, he was reluctant to keep grinding but after a chat with then manager Niall Stack, he gave it a go. “There is always a pull when you are in Ireland and I had spent so many years when we weren't competing that I had to give it a go when we were so competitive. Once it is there and we have a good team, you might as well put it all in.”

A poor performance in a Division 1 league semi-final against Ferbane saw him replaced at half time and he lined out against St Brigid's in a Division 3 league semi-final the following Tuesday. Unfortunately, he sustained an awful injury in that game, effectively tearing both hamstrings off the bone – to do one, would be rare but two at the one time is almost unheard of.

He has retained vivid memories of the incident in Daingean. “I took a short kickout from the keeper, went by a lad and I was running at top speed. He pushed me as I was running with the ball. I was gone ahead of him and my upper body hinged forward. I planted my left leg to catch myself, I decelerated and felt a pop in that. I put out my right leg and felt a pop in that as well.”

He didn't realise the severity of it until he got scans back but the almost unbearable pain told him, he was in bother. It was a chaotic time. With that injury there is a six week window for surgery or it won't reattach properly but it was a big operation and it was uncertain if an operation was the route to go. “The fact I had it in both legs was sort of unheard of. My left one was completely torn off the bone, my right one partially torn off but did require surgery.”

He was in severe pain but the physio did not think he could have torn both while his strength was still “decent even though part of them were torn off”. The initial diagnosis was that it was “just a spasm” and an X-ray the next day was inconclusive. Normally with that injury, it will bring a bit of bone with it which would show up in an X ray but not on this occasion. Again he was told he was “probably fine, it is just a spasm” but O'Brien knew something was wrong.

“I would like to think I have a pretty high pain threshold but I was in severe pain,” he recalled before getting an MRI. He was told by a physio in Tullamore that if he got surgery on both legs, he would be in a wheelchair for three months with “no guarantee of success”.

“That was tough enough to hear,” said O'Brien who then went to see consultant, former Dublin manager and 1970s star Pat O'Neill who advised him against it, telling him he was 33 and it was “major surgery in both legs”.

“I was at that stage where I was starting on the Tullamore team but not alone was my season over, my career was over,” O'Brien grimaced but he didn't accept it as he “kept getting third and fourth opinions, kept asking around”.

He was put in touch with Fergal Kerin by his Tullamore colleague Michael Brazil – working with Chelsea at that time in America, Tullamore had contact with him as he had done work with Cormac Egan when he got bad hamstring injuries early in his career. He sent a voice note with advice, encouragement and most importantly, put him in touch with a surgeon in the Santry sports clinic, Brian Devitt.

He gave O'Brien the first positive words that he wanted to hear, telling him he could get the surgery there and get back and play. He had dealt with a Leinster U19 rugby player who got back from a similar ordeal and O'Brien was told he would be on crutches for six weeks and back walking after that, rather than face a wheelchair – previously players had to wear a brace on the repaired leg and not move it but the technique had advanced with crutches and movement now regarded as beneficial. And there was further good news as Santry gave him a “discount” because he was getting the two done, basically “a two for the price of one deal”.

There was a year long rehab process after that and he missed a year of action.

Against the odds, he got back playing last year as Tullamore won the Intermediate Football Championship but it was very much in a cameo role. He wasn't running comfortably and his appearances were fleeting, coming on as a sub in the final win against St Brigid's, where Tullamore won the game in the first half and held on for dear life in the second.

This year, he has played a much more pivotal role, nailing down his place in his familiar wing back position. A vastly experienced player, he was an unsung hero, a rock steady performer who seldom put a foot wrong during a decade plus long career playing senior football for Tullamore. He won his first senior football medal in 2013 and added to his collection in 2021.

Now he is hoping to collect a senior B medal on Saturday, with Tullamore coming up on the rails to make the final against a club on the rise, Ballinagar, who are managed by his father Benny.

Understandably, he looks on it all as “bonus territory” and is delighted to be able to play full games, run hard for them. It took him time to get to this stage with his left hamstring initially giving bother “because that was the worse”. He still gets pain after games but it is improving the whole time. “I am delighted I got the operation because a lot of people were telling me not to get it,” he said, revealing that the two tendons would eventually have attached to something but he would only have been operating at 50-60% - there was also a possibility of attachment to the sciatic nerve and that would have opened a whole different can of worms with frequent shooting pains.

Having talked to many sports people who have come back from career threatening injuries and experienced it first hand himself, he is now a great believer in seeking other opinions if told bad news by a physio. “I don't think it is right that a physio will tell you that but I am glad to have made it back,” he smiled.

In Australia in 2023, he had changed career direction. He had went to Australia the week after the Dooley book was published in November 2022, spending a year travelling. He got a job as a physical trainer in the gym and this whetted his appetite – he wanted to work with athletes rather than the general population and set up his own company on return to Ireland, getting a qualification in strength and conditioning in Setanta College where he is now studying for a masters.

He had a big social media following on various pages he had and this assisted him in getting established. He went into strength and conditioning full time, working with individual GAA players, some elite but mainly club while he is the coach to the Tullamore senior football team, where he has won plenty of plaudits for his work.

“I probably more club players as at county level, they have their own s and c or should anyway,” he revealed. He has clients in America, Australia, 95% GAA as he focused on a niche.

He was asked by new Tullamore manager Paul McConway to be their strength and conditioning coach and was initially reluctant because of the travel from Dublin but having soldiered with “Maccer” for all his career, he just couldn't say no. He also welcomed the opportunity to work with a top level team and this has fuelled ambitions for more work of this nature – he would love to test himself at county level and move out of the “comfort zone” that exists for him with Tullamore, where he knows everyone so well.

He had no huge playing ambitions but still had unfinished business and was glad to tog out for Tullamore intermediates last year. “For me, it was just a good personal achievement to get back,” he reflected – he was playing soccer with Clontarf in the AUL in Dublin this year and with Tullamore senior Bs operating off a restricted panel this year, he was asked by manager Brian O'Reilly to play.

He was a sub in their loss to Daingean, was away for a couple of games and his first start was against Ballinagar and he retained his place for the group defeat by Tubber and the great semi-final win over Daingean.

“I am really enjoying it, it is bonus territory for me, I didn't think I would be back playing in a county final in O'Connor park and starting on the team,” he admitted.

He is also enjoying the football and the quality of opponents they are meeting. “The Daingean's and Ballinagar's have a very young age profile. I would have noticed the last time playing Ballinagar, the size of some of the players they have, really good athletes. It is a good standard of football. We have a few lads I played a long number of years with, Shane Dooley and Tom Furlong. Then you are playing with younger players who have just come through this year, so there is a nice mix there.”

O'Brien agreed that Tullamore needed their second team up in the second rather than third year. “Yeah, massively. It is always something we were conscious of, trying to get up. Even when it was senior, intermediate and junior, we were trying to get out of the junior.”

He pointed out that Tullamore isn't as big a club as some outsiders think and have a “quite small playing community”.

Their junior A and B teams train together as separate squads and the senior and senior B footballers go together but when you take out county players from these, it is a “small enough squad”.

“I know people from the outside might scoff at that but it is the way it is,” he insisted. Tullamore also took players from senior B to senior as required this year with Davin Keegan the last to go before the final group game. “And he fully deserved it. Senior B is a great breeding ground for senior and he has made the step up really well. We have small enough numbers in terms of that senior B squad at the moment but there is a really good standard of player there.”

He also pointed out that they are training every week against Cormac Egan, John Furlong and high calibre players with obvious benefits in that. “It is really important to be up there and we lost three games in the group so we weren't expecting to be in this position. It says a lot about the players and their mentality to be able to go out and win the last day (against Daingean in the semi-final).”

He acknowledged that there is a lot of talent in the senior B squad. “There definitely is talent. I know people talk about Peter Fox's score to win it the last day but if you look before that, Shane Horkan was one who put his hand up and caught the kick out when the game was on the line. If we lost that kick out, the game was over and he is a young player only coming through this year. It is great to have them playing at that level. If a player can play well at that level, there is no reason why they can't make the step up to senior A. Maccer has shown if you are playing well enough, he will put you in there at senior. He has done it with Jack Maher and Pa Kenna, they are starting on the team. Hopefully we are doing things right and producing. We know it is not always going to be like this in Tullamore, that there are swing and round abouts and we are just trying to capitalise as much as we can at the moment.

“We have been there through the lean times so we want to maximise what we have at the moment.”

When Tullamore lost to Tubber in their final group game, they had to wait for the result of the Ballinagar and Cappincur game to determine their fate. If Cappincur won, Tullamore were gone and they needed a Ballinagar win to advance. Ballinagar duly knocked out their neighbours but word that they were heading to a win was not conveyed to the team by their mentors during the second half.

O'Brien had forgotten that there was an escape chute for them and thought their season was over when the final whistle went. “I thought we were gone. We weren't getting information about the score. I was chatting my dad afterwards and he told me Cappincur were winning well and Ballinagar had a brilliant second half but when the final whistle went I thought the season was done and then someone said Ballinagar had won. It was a weird way to go through because you couldn't celebrate.”

Midfielder Cillian Martin had got a red card after the final whistle for abuse to referee Eamon O'Connor and this also added to the strange mood in the Tullamore camp. “We knew he was going to be suspended and we would be missing him (He got a two game ban, missing the semi-final and final) so it was disappointing. I actually thought we played well that day. We had such a bad start and gave them such a brilliant start. For the last 40 minutes we played quite well but we lost. It took a lot from Brian (O'Reilly) to get the group back but we were going into a semi-final and you always think you have a chance no matter who you are playing.”

Even though he has won a few senior football finals in O'Connor Park, several big games, he regards the semi-final win over Daingean as “one of the best days I ever had”.

“It was just the feeling. You think it is gone. I might be doing Peter (Fox) a discredit by saying it was a kick and hope but when you watch the video back and see where he took the shot from against the wind, it was unreal just to win it that day. You could see the celebrations on the pitch after it. It was brilliant for the group and it's big for the senior A team as well. Both groups would be quite close and to have everyone back training this week is just huge for us.”

O'Brien also agreed that Tullamore generally perform in finals and aren't afraid of them. “I don't think so but neither are Ballinagar. A lot of those lads have played in a Leinster final. I have lost a few finals in recent years to Rhode at senior level. It is about showing up and performing on the day. Then you are hoping a bit of luck will go your way. If you can stay in the mix to the end of the game, anything can happen, as you saw against Daingean.

“I am really looking forward to it. Any day you get to play a county final in O'Connor Park is just brilliant. Hopefully it will be a good game.”