Tyrone defies Thierry to make it to the World Cup in South Africa

The Irish may have lost out on the World Cup due to the handiwork of the French, but Mullingar will be well represented in South Africa by Tyrone Brunton who is the stage manager for the entire opening ceremony.The 33-year-old is set to mix with the likes of David Beckham, Black Eyed Peas, Shakira, Alicia Keys among other big names on the bill, but the Mullingar man remains quite modest about his work."Its just a job," Tyrone told the Westmeath Examiner this week. "It's pretty big, I mean everybody's going to be watching it, but for me, it's a gig," he explains."It will be nice to be there but it will be pretty hectic. I'll just be coordinating and supervising the two stages."Tyrone started out in 2000 as a set carpenter with Riverdance, but got a lucky break when production manager Michael O'Connor saw greater potential in him."For some reason he saw some potential in me and under his guidance I progressed and got into the production side of things, and finally got into the stage manager role.Orla Clarke from Mullingar who was the lead in Riverdance was also a big help to me, they're two people that believed in me, I owe a lot to them," he says.In 2005 Tyrone hit another lucky break and landed a job with OASIS, and his career took off from there.He has since worked with the likes of Kasabian, and this week goes on tour with A-HA before flying to South Africa for the World Cup."Oasis were part of my youth, I grew up listening to them so meeting them was pretty cool, and Kasabian are one of my favourite bands so to work with them was great. They were exceptionally nice people and it's nice to work with people who are nice."Tyrone was also stage manager for Oasis at Slane last year, and met five other lads from Mullingar there - The Blizzards:"It was really cool that a band from Mullingar were opening up the day, and with bands like Kasabian and Prodigy playing at that gig, it was really cool."And it was nice because I was stage manager and I actually was there to get them on stage, so that was a nice moment.It was cool that Mullingar was being represented at Slane that day.""It is a high pressure job, and it's good to travel, but to be honest you wake up in a tour bus in an arena. Work starts at half six in the morning and you finish when you've finished loading the trucks at 2.30am the next morning."To relax however, Tyrone likes going back to play his first love - basketball:"I took four months off this year to play basketball. I played for the Mullingar Dragons and in the national leagues with CHM Ballin -a team from Palmerstown in Dublin, so I'm still living the dream," he jokes.