Paddy Christie: The former Dublin star guiding Tipperary's charge

The Tipperary footballers have enjoyed a historic campaign, ending an 85-year wait for a Munster title on the centenary weekend of Bloody Sunday.

David Power's first year at the helm has been a remarkable one, and the Premier boss has rightly been praised after overseeing the success. Power has assembled an impressive backroom team, which includes former Dublin star Paddy Christie.

The Ballymun Kickhams club-man has made quite the name for himself on the sidelines with Dublin under-age teams and DCU, but this Tipp project is far from an exercise in bulking up his coaching CV. It is a county close to his heart, given his mother hails from the county.

"I would have spent half of my summers down there up until I was 18 or 19 actually," he explains. "I would have spent a lot of time in Lorrha down there. I have an awful soft spot for the place.

"There is a lot of Tipp connections. I was very friendly with Declan Browne too, the Tipp footballer, we were in Australia together with the International Rules in 2003. We would have done a few other things together. He was possibly going to get involved [this year], I was talking to him about it.

"The next thing he wasn't involved, but I went ahead and did it anyway."

'Tipperary is a bit like Ballymun'

Christie has been taken by the small, but tightknit, Tipperary football community.

"It is very special," he said. "It is a bit like the Ballymun thing really. Ballymun and Tipperary football, you wouldn't think there would be many parallels there, but funnily enough some of the core things are the same!

"There has been dark days over the years. Ballymun were struggling for a long time, a lot of things going against them. You wanted to see could you help to build things up, the very same with Tipperary football. The number of bad days and dark days, obviously 2016 was a very good time. Then the minor victory in 2011, the 21s had a Munster victory.

"Overall probably a lot of disappointment so it was lovely to see things happening against Cork and to see the pure elation in the panel and the families, the people around South Tipp and obviously we got a lot of goodwill from North Tipp too.

"The whole county is on a high. It is something different. They've had loads of success with Tipperary hurlers, but it is a bit of a strange one with the footballers going so well. It probably gave everyone a bit of a boost after the disappointment of the hurling championship."

The whole county is on a high.

Working with David Power

It was a chance encounter when Christie first came across Power.

"I was looking to contact Charlie McGeever, who was looking after the Tipperary minors when I was looking after the Dublin minors," Christie recalled.

"But he's an awful man for answering his phone! I couldn't get in contact with him to get a challenge game. So I got David Power's number from somebody and I rang him. Needless to say we had a good chat about Tipperary football and about Dublin and about Ballymun. All sort of things.

"I just really warmed to him. I just thought he was a really good football man. He cared an awful lot.

"David and myself had a long chat that day. And I remember thinking to myself, that's a really, really good guy. When he came back to me last year and asked me to get involved, I think we just had a bond straight away.

"This came around at the end of September, the start of October [last year]. I was under a lot of pressure, I'm looking after the DCU Sigerson team, I'm principal here in Kilcoskan National School out in North County Dublin so I had a lot on my plate at the time. I sort of just thought I'd see how it would go."

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It is fair to say that it has been an emphatic success thus far and Christie is thoroughly enjoying working with the Kilsheelan man.

"The nature of David is fundamentally it's never about him, which I really like," he said. "You always get the impression that he's doing things for the best interests of Tipperary football. As long as that's the case then it's not hard to create core values in a group and create a culture because the seeds have been planted at the top.

"David has exemplified what a team spirit is, what core values are and what Tipperary football means. A lot of the time he delegates responsibility to other people, he'd get more publicity if he likes but he's always trying to spread it around.

"For me, that was a very, very important thing. I'd like to think I'd be that way inclined myself and as long as you've people who are interested in what's best for Tipperary football, then the footballers themselves will be unselfish and make good decisions. And you'll hopefully have a team that's bereft of an ego then as such that it's all about what's best for Tipperary, not about what's best for Michael Quinlivan, Evan Comerford, Steven O'Brien or whoever else."

O'Riordan's return

The first year was far from what they planned given the delayed season, but their cause was helped by the return of Colin O'Riordan from Australia and the AFL star has made a significant impact on and off the field.

"With Colin you're getting the extra knowledge of a fella who has seen a lot over in a professional set-up in the AFL," said Christie.

"He talks well to the players, highly respected. He's an addition as a player and as a person as well. Within the first week I spotted...and sometimes you hear of these things and think they're gimmicky little things. I didn't take a picture of it or anything like that because I didn't think it needed to be done, but I saw him picking up stuff and helping the kitman with gear. Needless to say you've a 40-man panel and there's tops left on the ground. Fellas walk in and they're half asleep coming in off the pitch, they're talking to each other and leave stuff behind them.

"I was just thinking to myself, this fella is helping the kitman here. He's on a professional contract over in the AFL, he comes back and has no airs or graces, speaks really well, plays well on the pitch and then picks up stuff afterwards. Not because anyone is watching or because there's pictures being taken, and doesn't put it up on Twitter or anywhere else, but just does it because it's the team ethic and to help somebody else.

"That's a core value that you can't talk about or implant in somebody, that's already inside them."