The 22-year-old defender has already made a habit of upsetting the status quo as he prepares for senior international debut.
David Sneyd TO LOOK AT Jake O’Brien now you’d be tempted to make a pretty quick assumption about the towering 6ft 4in defender.
Advertisement “I wasn’t as physically developed enough to compete with these players. It was only 16, 17 things started coming for me in terms of physicality. When I was at Cork City it was about putting it together, physicality and developing before going over to England,” he says. A turning point to help improve that physicality came at the age of 16. After being told that he wasn’t strong enough to compete at international level after an unsuccessful trial for Ireland’s U16s, O’Brien returned to Cork determined to improve.
He scored a late winner for Lyon in a 3-2 win over Toulouse before joining up with interim boss John O’Shea’s squad for the friendlies with Belgium and Switzerland.
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