Mairead O'Brien warns Kilkenny that Waterford ‘running faster than ever' after skorts row ahead of All-Ireland clash

The Irish Sun

2 days ago

MAIRÉAD O'BRIEN has warned Kilkenny that Waterford are ready to hit the ground running — and they have been running faster than ever before.
Today, Michael Boland's Suirsiders get their Glen Dimplex All-Ireland
Championship
Group 2 campaign underway against the Cats, who already have a win under their belt after thumping
Derry
last weekend.
2
Dual star Mairead O'Brien warned Kilkenny that Waterford are working harder than ever
Credit: Michael P Ryan/Sportsfile
2
Kilkenny players return to the changing room before the Leinster Senior Camogie final against Wexford
Credit: Michael P Ryan/Sportsfile
The action throws in at UPMC Nowlan Park at 12.30pm and O'Brien cannot wait to don her shorts and try to take down the Cats.
The game's postponement — after the players insisted they would be lining out in shorts — was a regrettable plotline but ultimately led to the alteration of the rule on playing kit by a 98 per cent majority at a Special Congress, allowing players to choose shorts or skorts.
And O'Brien, 22, said: 'Yeah, we were delighted. We got the
news
at training and we were just about to do our
running
bloc. I swear we've never run so fast all year.
Read More on Camogie
'It is a massive step. There was an issue with comfort levels but the players were listened to and the results were pretty significant. And any step forward for keeping younger girls involved is great. It was frustrating to have the Munster final postponed 16 hours before when all the preparations had been made to optimise our performance. We had been training well and had a good win over Tipperary to get there.
'I suppose as a group we're just
driving
it forward and just focusing on the Championship now. And I think the management team we have currently is phenomenal.
'The commitment they've shown is as much as the girls'. We're all just kind of working together and pushing forward as a group and trying to get the best out of each other.'
The postponing of the Munster final and the fact they had a bye for the first week of the Championship means Waterford are perhaps more rested up than they would like to be.
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But given she hit the Cats for a brace of goals on the way to defeat in the league in March, Tommy Shefflin and Co will definitely be forewarned about O'Brien's threat — and even if they were not, Caoimhe Keher Murtagh would inform them.
Cats
star
Keher Murtagh was a colleague of O'Brien as UL won the Ashbourne Cup for a second season on the trot, and they were both in the third level Team of the Year.
Young Kerry LGFA fan steals the show with sign during All-Ireland final win over Galway
But whereas Keher Murtagh's Rower-Inistioge are a storied, traditional
The camogie club was only established in 2011 to field an Under-12 team but O'Brien has been at the core of everything that has been good about them since, highlighted by her tally of 1-4 as they defeated Tipperary outfit Fethard by 2-5 to 0-10 in the Munster junior club final last November.
She explained: 'The first adult team was put out in 2017, we won the junior in 2019 and then obviously last year we had a good run of luck.
'As a group, our main aim was to get back to the county final and try and win it. We probably bottled a lot of disappointment from the year previous. But to be fair, we used it to our advantage and went back training that bit earlier and worked really hard through the year.
'Once we got out of the county, we were definitely in bonus territory, and unknown territory.
'The lads involved were great when it came to the big days. They never kind of picked up on the occasion too much. Their main point is just to go out and enjoy it and
work
really hard. And that's what happened.'
'UNBELIEVABLE'
The smile breaks out just thinking about Modeligo's odyssey and what it meant in the small country parish.
She added: 'It was just unbelievable. We had a few good celebrations. We just enjoyed it. When we were enjoying it, we were just playing well. The whole community was behind us.
'And in the Munster final, they were definitely a 16th player. We were struggling for scores in the second half and had phenomenal support that got us over the line.'
With that club success behind her, and experience of playing in one All-Ireland final already at a young age when the Déise went down to Cork in 2023, O'Brien is at the top of her game at the moment, alongside celebrated camogie county stars such as Beth Carton, Niamh Rockett,
Lorraine
Bray and Brianna O'Regan.
But football has also been part of her story — a former dual operator, O'Brien stepped away from the big-ball squad this year as she was completing her final year in physiotherapy at UL.
Everything right now is zoned in on the
next
couple of months with Waterford camogie — and today's date with the Cats ensures that it is no soft launch.
She said: 'They beat us in the league but we would be looking to improve our performance from then. We got off to a good start but in the second half we didn't maintain it.
'I don't think we've ever actually beaten them in Championship so hopefully we will put that right this time.'