Sinead Kissane: Confidence back but Lar needs right triggers for big shoot-out

This week Dublin hurling boss Anthony Daly broke down the feeling of losing to either the pain or the shame; he believes the pain of defeat is easier than the shame of not performing. Of course pain and shame are not mutually exclusive. If you spend an afternoon sandwiched between Jackie Tyrrell and Walsh and negate your own scoring potential, then pain and shame may come to tailgate you.

As usual, what went missing after a controversy like this was perspective. Corbett got a whipping of anti-social media abuse.

Disgrace was a word name-checked with his character. It also became an excuse to give Chelsea's John Terry a run for comedic photoshopping including one picture of Corbett popping up at Walsh's wedding.

Corbett has stated that he's a "confidence-player". In his autobiography 'All In My Head', Corbett said he was part of the meeting which agreed on the plan for him to mark Walsh in that All-Ireland semi-final. Tyrrell kept Corbett scoreless in the All-Ireland final in 2011. And the Tipp forward wanted to find a new template.

If Corbett is a player who feeds off those around him, then why wasn't that confidence instilled in him to go up against Tyrrell again rather than look for an exit strategy from another match-up? This is, after all, the man who scored 4-4 in the 2011 Munster final. And 3-0 in the 2010 All-Ireland final. Hurler of the Year etc.

The GAA would probably be brilliantly boring if every player had the confidence and cockiness of a player like Sweden football star Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Imagine Corbett using this Zlatanism about his mate Tyrrell: "First I went left, he did too. Then I went right, and he did too. Then I went left again, and he went to buy a hot-dog".

Not many sports stars can thrive in their game irrespective of the coaches around them. Rory McIlroy has serious back-up in his locker-room but you get the sense that he managed to learn himself how to reconnect with the game. In team sport, Brian O'Driscoll played with a consistent confidence with most of the coaches and managers he worked with throughout his career.

Hothouse

But most players need to be in a hothouse where their confidence is cultivated by their coaches. Even the uber-cocky Ibrahimovic felt the moxie drain from him during his time at Barcelona. "I felt like crap when I was sitting in the locker-room with (Pep) Guardiola staring at me like I was an amazing distraction, an outsider," Ibra said.

Look at Ronan O'Gara. A confident player in his time, right? But he admitted that he used to feel ten feet tall when former Munster head coach Tony McGahan called him 'The King' before games.

At inter-county level, Corbett's confidence seems to fluctuate depending on the managers and coaches around him. There was the high of Nicky English, who gave him his Tipperary debut. Different rollercoaster with the Babs Keating-John Leahy set-up.

After a league defeat to Galway in 2006, Keating said of his players: "We cannot get that drive from them. Our fellows were dead only to wash them." Ouch.

In his autobiography, Corbett recalls an occasion at half-time in a championship game with Wexford when he scored 1-1 in the first half. "When John Leahy approached me in the dressing-room, I assumed he was about to pat me on the head and tell me I'm flying. Instead he let me have it again over a couple of mistakes. I was never as gobsmacked in all of my life."

A microcosm of the team but Corbett's mindset changed with the arrival of 'the dream team' of Liam Sheedy, Eamon O'Shea and Michael Ryan. Corbett found a mentor in O'Shea, who "instilled such belief in me that my own family remarked how different I was in the three years he spent with the squad."

Now Corbett is back fit. O'Shea has settled in as manager. And Tipperary are playing Cork in Sunday's All-Ireland semi-final. So can O'Shea help Corbett regain his magic? The confidence is coming back. There was 2:11 on the clock in their quarter-final with Dublin in Thurles when a sublime first touch-no-look-over-the-shoulder shot saw Corbett register the first point for Tipp. Another point was his tally. But in his interview with 'The Sunday Game', Corbett showed a steeliness and focus which betrayed more than what he said about it being the first time they will play in Croke Park since 2012.

Before a league game in 2008 when he was part of Sheedy's staff, O'Shea told Corbett to go for goals and not be afraid of half-chances. "I won't judge you for it," O'Shea said. "But I might judge you if you don't go for it. So take a chance and don't be looking to the sideline if it doesn't work out."

When Corbett plays for the first time in a championship game at Croker since that semi-final defeat to Kilkenny and that sideshow with Walsh and Tyrrell, they're exactly the kind of words Corbett should have in his head. Everything else may just follow.