Another week another interview with a sports star from everyone's favourite county, the Scallion Eaters...#CarlowRising
Carlow's Paul Broderick joined OTB's Eoin Sheehan to discuss his side's run to the Leinster semi-final, his history with injuries, and his sides tactics and work that goes on away from the eyes of the public, but we couldn't let him leave with asking about Brendan Murphy's decision to skip this season's Championship in favour of spending a summer in America.
Broderick said that while the news came as a surprise to both he and the panel, there have been no ill feelings towards Murphy and the squad has dealt with the loss well and don't use it as a form of motivation as many pundits have claimed they might.
"It was a blow, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a blow. It probably wasn't easy for him to do, but he came in and announced that he was going and that it was the right time for him and his fiancee to go. No one really begrudged him going, but I suppose for us a huge part of our game revolves around Brendan so we knew that we had a point to prove. That it isn't all about him, that we can perform as a team, without him or without any one member. It's not about Brendan individually, it's about if anyone left".
"When Brendan left, I think that was a Tuesday night, that session and the one after that was a bit of a lull, but we'd have loads of leaders on the team and lots of lads just stood up and were counted. They didn't mention Brendan's name, but they said "we're bigger than any one player and we need to stand up and show what we can do". The lads deserve huge credit for that".
While some have claimed Carlow's strategy and game plan has changed to deal with Murphy's loss, Broderick said that it's more of a visual thing. Using the example of different faces to claim possession from kick outs, Broderick said that others have simply stepped in to fill the void and means that they no longer rely as heavily on a particular ball-winner, and it's given other players the chance to show their quality.
"The coach is there and he might say, and he's just saying a name so a lot of the time when we're talking about kick outs or anything like that it was Brendan's name that'd come out of the managers mouth because a lot of the time he was winning a lot of our kick outs, but the name that's come out of the lips has changed but we haven't changed a whole lot. So we might look a bit different to play but we haven't changed. So as we play on the field we might look a bit different in the manner that we play but we haven't intentionally changed anything. There's a belief there that lads like Eoghan Ruth, Sean Murphy, Sean Gannon, and other lads who can go out and win and field ball, they've just stepped in".
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