IN ALL FAIRNESS - Tipp comps are back among the best

It is hard to remember a meatier sporting weekend, outside of Tipperary reaching an All-Ireland Final in a long time. If the build-up to County Hurling Final weekend in four grades wasn’t enough, there is the return of the Miller Shield as trials for the county senior hurling panel, as well as the fall-out from last Tuesday’s county board meeting, where depending on which side of the argument you are on, sixteen senior clubs were relegated in one go, or that the O Riain Cup was just given a name-change to Premier Intermediate from 2022, from where the successors to Templederry as winners of the O Riain Cup will represent Tipperary in the Munster Intermediate Club Championship.

For many, that wasn’t a good enough reason to make the change but certainly it improves Tipperary chances of winning the competition, last done so by Silvermines in 2012 and previously Kiladangan in 2004, when they went onto win the All-Ireland title, Tipp’s lone success in the grade.

Moyne-Templetuohy will represent Tipperary this year when they take on Kerry senior kingpins Kilmoyley at the end of the month and while they have the potential to be very competitive and indeed go a long way, if the change were to come in now and it were Templederry marching on, with their ability, you could easily conceive of them getting all the way to Croke Park.

However, that won’t matter to the people of Templederry who still week bask in the glow of being county champions and winners of the O Riain Cup. From the moment they were relegated to the competition in 2015, the Kenyons were always ranked among the favourites to win it subsequently but fell short at the knockout stages. But from an early stage this year there seemed to be something different about them.

They hit the ground running in the league and while many clubs throw their nose up at the competition, Templederry got value from it in blooding new players such as Mikie Ryan and Colm Murray. It helped create a strength in depth in the panel, overcoming the late return of Darragh Carey through injury, while Gearoid Ryan, Christy Coughlan and Brian Stapleton were also missing for parts of the campaign.

They might have missed a beat against Borris-Ileigh in the North quarter final and against Silvermines, which was a dead-rubber for Templederry, their goal was always on the knockout stages and to record double-digit victories in the quarters, semis and finals was hugely impressive.

Not many strong clubs with deep depth would have had the bravery to start the player of the calibre of Brian Stapleton from the bench last Sunday. He has been hampered by an Achilles problem since they defeated Clonakenny two months ago and was getting fitter week by week. It would have been easy and understandable to put him back into the starting line-up, but the management went with the players who got them to the final and that kind of trust is so important in a team that is trying to get anywhere and is certainly why Templederry have the ability to make an immediate impact at Dan Breen level in 2002.

Challenging themselves against the likes of Loughmore/Castleiney and Thurles Sarsfields is where Templederry, and indeed any club outside the top sixteen wants to be, and for the second year in a row, we got the final the quality of the championship deserved, and while there might be recriminations over the altering to the structures and the breaking of the link between the Dan Breen and Seamus O Riain Cup going forward, you can’t but say that we haven’t gotten quality finals over the last two years in particular, adding in last Saturday’s intermediate final between Moyne-Templetuohy and Kilsheelan/Kilcash which by all accounts, and judging by the scoreboard was a classic altogether.

Tradition is all well and good but when it starts hampering the quality of competitions, something had to be done and I believe we are now in a place where the Tipperary club championships in the top three grades are now back on a par with the rest in the country.

Some might ask does my tune change now that Lorrha have been relegated from senior to intermediate? No, it doesn’t. Lorrha were a tier 2 team that were relegated to tier 3 on the field and whether you call the competition the O Riain Cup, Premier Intermediate or whatever you like, Lorrha will still be a tier 3 team next year and will be damn hard to win with the quality that is there.

It goes to show how quickly things can change where twelve months ago a club can be on the cusp of promotion to tier one, and now is preparing for life in tier 3. If it can happen to them, it can happen to any club and shows the danger and the excitement promotion and relegation brings.

P.S. – Thanks to all the well-wishers on the MacNamee Award. It was truly humbling to have the book recognised in such a way, but all the glory goes to Len Gaynor as it was his story, and he had a great one to tell.