Grace embraces pressure as 'hurt from last year’ drives Offaly on

By Kevin Egan

Once his career as a player was over, Ronan O’Gara spoke about times in the earlier part of his career when his confidence was low, citing how there were times when he was on the field and he actively didn’t want the game to rest on his shoulders.

If his team was two points down, he secretly feared a penalty from 40 metres out and if they were six points down, he would have dreaded the thought of a try in the corner, leaving him with a touchline kick that would be the winning or losing of the game.

Such thoughts are entirely human and understandable, but every bit as understandable is why no active player would ever talk about such fears to anyone other than their own closest friends or family, or perhaps a sports psychologist. Certainly not to a reporter, so the information would soon be accessible to every trash-talking opponent.

Yet when interviewing a freetaker, or a scorer, the question of whether or not you want that situation for yourself is still interesting; not because of the substance of the answer, but because of how it’s presented. Perhaps there might be a joking reference to looking to go short with a pass, or even a moment of hesitation, as if the pros and cons need to be weighed up internally.

Since last week, this reporter’s new record for the fastest response now goes to Grace Teehan. She had absolutely no hesitation in replying to the question as to whether or not she would want to take a last-puck free from the sideline with the game on the line.

“Yeah, of course you want the situation,” she replies in perhaps one seventh of a second, in an emphatic tone that leaves no doubt.

“Of course you do because you have a chance and as long as you have a chance, you can win. Obviously there's a pressure but you have to forget about that. All you can do is try your best and that's what I tell myself.

“There's a pressure on everyone when they're going out to play, whether you feel it inside you or not. It might feel like more on an All-Ireland final day but all we can do is play the game that's in front of us and if a forward misses, we're straight into working on forgetting about it and moving on to the next ball.”

It invites a question on visualisation on a broader scale, and whether or not she envisaged having a place in All-Ireland final Sunday at Croke Park.

“Yeah, I did. Based on last year, we felt like we had unfinished business and we definitely had room for improvement after losing the semi-final. We felt there was more in us, and the next step after the semi-final is the final.

"There was a lot of hurt from last year so when we came in this year, the ultimate goal was to get at least to the All-Ireland semi-final and then to get over the line to see what came next. Everybody believed on the panel that we could get to the All-Ireland final and we're here now.”

In a young panel, Teehan is one of a small handful of players that has more than year or two of experience of what is required to compete in Division One of the league and at Senior level in the championship. A league final win over Derry ensured the former, now the latter is on the table on Sunday, and she feels that their redemption arc is continuing and that the group is ready to return to the top tier. .

“I think so, I think we've done a lot of work over the last two years,” she replies.

“Our latter years at senior were tough and we weren't really competing where we wanted to be. But we've done a lot of work, we've brought in new girls, girls have come back and we've worked really hard to be a team and everybody is on the same page. So hopefully we'd stick together and we'd be fighting and be competing as a senior team. We're in a better place now (than when they were relegated in 2022) because our mindset is different,” she maintains.

“Naturally you’ll have a defeatist mindset when you’re losing games for years and years. Now, after building together and winning together, it totally shifts the mindset and you believe a lot more in yourself and you're willing to work a lot harder, we know now what it takes to be able to compete.

“You're digging deep when you are playing and training because there's an All-Ireland final at stake, we knew from the start of this season that was on the table for us if we put the effort in. When we were in senior, we didn't think that we could get to that stage, it was going to be a case of either getting out of the group, or at best getting to a quarter-final.”

So should supporters expect a win on Sunday? “Yeah, that’s the plan,” she replies, albeit taking ever so slightly longer than a seventh of a second to respond.