Alan O’Connor on how St Finbarr’s learned to replace panic with poise

St Finbarr’s have stopped flinching when things go wrong. They don’t chase chaos, don’t rip up the plan. For Alan O’Connor at least, they stay on message.

And at 30 years old, still playing, still thriving, Alan has seen it all along the way. The panic of poor starts, the scrambling to fix what wasn’t broken. This year, something changed. Resilience stopped being a buzzword and became a habit.

There are a number of factors behind it all, but perhaps the two most notable influential factors are their manager, Brian Roche, and their psychologist, Stephanie Doherty.

But let’s start with Brian.

“He is not a man of many words,” O’Connor begins. “He obviously gives us our team talks and things like that. I am not overly surprised he doesn't do a lot of media. He keeps to himself and to the group.” 

There’s a quiet relentlessness to Roche that O’Connor clearly admires.

“One of the things Brian will do is try and get the best out of a group no matter what. He will outwork every other management in the country to get any kind of edge,” he says. “The time the lads put in is unbelievable.” One of Roche’s greatest strengths, O’Connor believes, is his refusal to deviate.

“The one thing Brian does is he always, always backs our system,” Alan explains. “If there is any lesson for any manager out there, it is don't panic, don't move off script. We have had loads of reference points throughout the season where we haven't been playing well.

“We weren't playing particularly well against Nemo in the county final, we had a bad first half against Ballincollig in the semi-final.

“We were playing poor against Clon and Carbery Rangers in the group,” he admits. “But at half-time, it was stay on brand, stay on message, do the simple things right, keep to our brand of football and we will win this game.” 

That approach has certainly stood to them this season. But getting to a stage where trusting the plan when the warning signs suggest you shouldn’t, took some time.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COMPOSURE 

If Roche built the framework, Stephanie Doherty helped them believe in it.

“I think there are times, where we've kind of been caught in a bit of shock. We brought in Stephanie there this year to kind of deal with more of the psychological side of things,” O’Connor says. 

One of the things she asked us about was, what are reference points we have where maybe we haven't adjusted well.

They made conscious changes. Early goals used to shake them – one against Castlehaven in 2023, another point straight from throw-in a year later. Now, they’ve learned to absorb the blow and go again.

“We were like, okay, what can we do to improve our start? and it's something we actually worked quite consciously on and if you look back at our games this year, we've started a little bit better, even if we haven't played well throughout the first half.

“We've got really good leadership in our team,” he adds. “I don't even need to name names now, but, I think we have about four or five players that can really stand up and talk very well. I just think it's that we don't need to deviate from what we're doing, we've got loads of reference points to show that our system works, we just need to execute it better.

“Rather than, ‘alright boys, we're abandoning everything here, we're going to start anew’ and that's something that I just think, managers can panic sometimes, and we've all done it. But it's just something that's not happened this year.

“She's been outstanding, as in, I genuinely know I couldn't speak highly enough about her, and after the [county] final, I certainly spoke to her and I hope everyone else did, about the impact that she brought to our team.

LESSONS UNDER PRESSURE 

“We certainly call ourselves mentally resilient and we have a lot of reference points of when we're playing badly,” O’Connor outlines. “But we still dig it out, we were playing league final against Clon and to Clon's credit, we had put a bit of a lead on them and they came back.

[They] brought it to extra time and we were like, ‘no boys, this is what we've been talking about all year now, this is our chance to show that we're mentally resilient’.

“We've shown it time and time again, we were down at half time against Nemo, we brought it up and then they brought it level, and Cillian Murray kicked an unbelievable score and then we held our nerve.

“I know they hit the post at the end, but I just think we've shown time and time again that we can bounce back from these things.” 

It isn’t just about recovering from setbacks either. Sometimes, resilience is the refusal to be dragged out of shape.

“One of the things that, we spoke about from a resilience perspective is, I think we might have been down by a point against Clonmel in the closing minutes, and they had the ball at our arc and kept it for – I think we had a clip of three minutes – or three minutes and 35 seconds or something.

“We all stayed on brand, stayed on message, no one ran renegade.

“We know these are sound, tactical things. Stick at it, don't panic, even when the Haven went down to 14 men, they had the ball at the edge of our D, we weren't rushing into tackles because we have to dispossess them because they're 14 men.

“We stuck to our brand of football, and that's something that's mental resilience,” he says. “It's not always just bouncing back, it's executing what you need to do, not deviating from a plan that you know should work if you do it properly.

“And I think in this kind of current game with our, whatever you want to call it, our arc defending, and then kind of our arc attacking, it can turn with the two pointers and stuff like that as well.

“But by the same token, we try and say it's still basically a football game. There are 15 players, you still have your one-on-one match-ups if you get your chance to take it.” 

For O’Connor, every stumble along the road became a reference. The heavy league defeat to Clonakilty early in the year – the only one they suffered – now reads as a turning point rather than a scar.

“Something I didn't kind of realise until later in the season, Clon was actually the only game we've lost all year, in the league,” O’Connor remarks. “Now, I wasn't there, I was away myself, and we were missing a lot.

“And we got absolutely thumped, and from what the lads were saying, they really put the boot down.

“People were like, ‘oh, it'd be great now, if we didn't get Clon in the league final, we wouldn't have to show our hand’, and on a personal level, I was like, ‘let's take them here now’. Clon have given us unbelievable games over the last year.

“We've played them in two league finals, we've played them in Championship countless times, we've played them in the county final in 2021, they've given us huge games. And it was a massive game, in my opinion, it was a bit of a catalyst for us to show us that, we are a team that can bounce back when the chips go against us.” 

Anything can happen on Sunday. An early goal, an unlucky penalty conceded. But whatever challenges Dingle throw up, if there’s one thing that St Finbarr’s have proven this year, it’s that they will not panic.