Few players have been as ready for their Championship debut as Tipperary's Bryan O'Mara.
Still, when it eventually arrived the powerful half-back admitted his father 'couldn't sit still' with the nerves.
That was for the five-goal win over Clare when O'Mara, slotting in at wing-back next to Ronan Maher, finally featured in a Championship game after two years of false starts.
An All-Ireland U-20 winner in 2019, O'Mara was elevated to National League duty in 2020 but just when he looked primed for his Championship debut in 2021 he broke his arm and suffered an unrelated second arm break shortly after returning.
Then, for 2022, he opted to take a year out and to hurl in the US. Given the delays and misfortune, his father could be forgiven for his anxiety in Ennis.
"I think he was more nervous than I was, he couldn't sit still, he was all over the place," smiled O'Mara at the launch of the FRS Recruitment World Games which take place in Derry in July. "It was great, very exciting. It was nice to get it done."
Having featured in all of Tipp's National League games, and captained UL to a successful Fitzgibbon Cup title defence with a series of terrific displays, manager Liam Cahill will have realised that it wasn't any sort of gamble.
O'Mara is the sort of player Tipp will almost certainly look to build their defence around in the coming years. He has no regrets about missing last year to travel though did curse his bad luck with the injuries in 2021.
Holding up his arm to display a couple of hefty scars, he explained the situation.
"It was just one very bad year, the covid year of 2021. I broke my arm in the first few minutes of the Limerick game in the league, very first game of the year. Then I was just coming back right and Tipp just happened to be knocked out of the Championship. Two weeks later, I broke it again with the club, so I had to get two surgeries on the arm in the one year. It was just a disaster, I was the whole year doing pre-season essentially.
"Two different bones in the arm, one broke the first time and the other broke the second time. Just bad luck."
O'Mara lasted the duration of the Round 1 win over Clare and will be expected to line out again at Páirc Uí Chaoimh against Cork Saturday evening. When the sides met a year ago, Cork put 3-30 on the board to consign Tipp to rock bottom in the Munster table.
"I was at the game, it was disappointing," said O'Mara who didn't leave for the US until shortly after. "I think the media went in hard on the lads, I think people forget the lads are the hardest people on themselves. They don't need to be told that things didn't go to plan, they know themselves.
"They are not going out there to hurl bad, they are not training for six months to perform badly. To see the media going in hard on them, it's the nature of it, but it's hard to see boys getting that slack when you know how hard everybody was trying."
