An All-Ireland winner at minor and U20, O'Mara's progression into the senior ranks has taken longer than expected
At the fourth time of asking, Bryan O'Mara is hoping for lift-off as a Tipperary senior hurler.
Last February's Fitzgibbon Cup winning captain declined to play for Tipp in 2022, spending the summer in the US instead to tally with the final year of his undergraduate degree at UL.
For a player with high inter-county mileage as an All-Ireland minor winner in 2016 and All-Ireland U-20 winner in 2019, it was a badly needed break.
But having had his senior debut season of 2020 ruined by the pandemic, and having missed most of 2021 with a broken arm in Round 1 of the National League, it was also another delay in his senior development.
New Tipp boss Liam Cahill, who managed O'Mara as a minor and U-20, knows the Holycross-Ballycahill player well and has called him into the panel for 2023.
O'Mara sees it as a huge opportunity, not just for himself but for all of those who starred as Tipp underage players and who now wish to lead a senior revolution.
"Absolutely, it's just up to us now to try to push that on," said the 23-year-old Masters student at the draws for the Electric Ireland Higher Education Championships. "It's our job now to train hard and to try to stake down a place in a league team, or even in the pre-season league in January, just try to win those games and see what happens from there."
The hope around Tipp is that Cahill can pull all those players together again and wring out their full potential.
Many have already been upgraded. Of the 20 that featured for Tipp against Cork in the final round of last season's Munster senior championship, nine of them had either played in the 2018 or 2019 All-Ireland U-21/U-20 wins. Craig Morgan and Jake Morris played in both those underage wins.
O'Mara was among the first of those U-20s to be upgraded and started the 2020 National League against Limerick, playing in four of the five league games that season but when the Championship took place later in that Covid-19 interrupted year, he was overlooked.
Then came the arm break in the first round of the 2021 league and the decision to step away for 2022.
Given how well he performed in the Fitzgibbon Cup earlier this year, it wouldn't have surprised anyone if he'd been Tipp's centre-back.
"Ah look, it was something I wanted to do," said O'Mara of his three months or so in the US. "I feel like I got it out of my system. It probably would have been always there, regretting not going. I've talked to a lot of people, 30-odd year-olds, and they'd say, 'Jeez, I regret not going'. At least I have done it now. I really enjoyed it and I'm mad for action in all codes."
O'Mara didn't quite toss his hurley in the corner for the summer. He ended up playing for the Na Fianna club in San Francisco though still felt well off the pace when he got back.
"Coming back from America, in the club championship, I felt off the pace a bit. But sure that's part and parcel of it, if you're away from that level of hurling for even a few months it's enough to set you back. It doesn't take you long to get back though, you take a few hits and you get forced into getting up to the pace of it again."
On the broader issue of Tipp and their fall down the rankings - the bookies make them 14/1 fifth favourites for the All-Ireland - since the 2019 MacCarthy Cup success, O'Mara shrugged.
"I think the margins at that level are so fine," he said. "You might think it's big and the next thing it mightn't actually be as big, or the other way maybe, it might actually be bigger than you think, it's hard to tell. It will be hard to tell until we get going in the league and until we get going in the first round of the Championship as well. We have a lot of work to do but I think we have the people in place who are willing to do it."
