KILLINAN END - Fortunes can change quickly

The July day three years ago when Tipp came off the ropes to beat Wexford in an epic All-Ireland semi-final never seemed further away than it did last weekend as the colours of both counties had been lowered.

The promise of the first round quickly turned to dust and slipped through the fingers of fate. Wexford’s outcome has threatened for some time – remember that they only managed to draw with Dublin even at their 2019 peak when the Model County took the Leinster title. That is no judgement of Wexford, rather an acknowledgement that a Dublin team that drew with the eventual provincial winners and beat Galway that year has not been far away. Intermingled with their loss to Laois that year, have been a few close calls against Kilkenny in recent years. With Dublin now poised to take one of the three spots in Leinster who knows what they might do against Kilkenny or Galway? Wexford themselves have a get-out-of-jail possibility in the last round at Nowlan Park, assuming no slip-ups before that of course. You would wonder if the dropped points from the Galway-Wexford game will come back to haunt somebody.

At least Wexford have the prospect of salvaging something from the season. That looks beyond Tipp even if you accept the oft-stated target of four points as probably sufficient. Based on last Sunday against Clare neither remaining game looks winnable. The defensive lapses which saw Brian Hogan’s last-ditch saves count for nothing as Clare-men queued up for the rebound are not new.

In the desire to pluck optimism from the fire of Walsh Park we ignored the lack of marking for at least one of Waterford’s goals. At this level defending goes far beyond being a good individual hurler, it is a test of the defensive system in the first instance. That was a test Tipp failed spectacularly. At times it appeared that Clare had extra players as space opened up in front of them. As it happens Tipp’s defenders did well in individual exchanges for the most part, but positioning and spatial awareness was a fundamental problem.

All that said, Tipp fought manfully for much of the second-half though some of the shot choices were not clever. Long range point efforts failed too many times even if the intensity of Clare’s defence made the alternative less than productive. Yet it was goals which did for Tipp and even by half-time it seemed a bridge too far. If having nothing to lose empowers a team, then we can head for the TUS Gaelic Grounds and the next round with some abandon. On the face of recent results, it is a prospect beyond daunting but rooting out mistakes and upping the intensity several notches would take Tipp a fair way to competitiveness.

The broader picture in Munster is maybe not as clear as might have been thought originally which had 1) Limerick 2) Waterford and 3) Cork as the running order, with the winner of Tipp/Clare as a wild card. You would have to think that based on the Tipp game the Banner County must be in the shake-up for a place in the top three. Anthony Daly spoke of their fixtures and how it might work in their favour, with playing both Tipp and Cork in Thurles and Limerick and Waterford in Ennis. Better still, they will have Limerick in the champions’ last match when they might be inclined to relax their selection ahead of a Munster Final especially with injuries being an issue.

Then there is the visit of Waterford to Ennis in the last round. Is it possible that Waterford might not be over the line at that stage? Let us say that the notion of Limerick-Waterford as a nailed-on Munster Final pairing might be a little previous. Will Cork have a rebound in them? Bear in mind that their troubles at Páirc Uí Chaoimh recently were against the best team in the competition. No less than in Leinster there is the prospect of predictable unpredictability ahead.

The Munster championship has been a fair way ahead of its Leinster counterpart not least because of the heavy beatings which Westmeath and Laois took in the second round. You would wonder at the viability of a six-team competition in that province which can serve to distort scoring differentials. There will be no question of distortion next weekend in Salthill when in many respects we have arguably the most interesting match of the whole round-robin part of the championship. It is a must-win game for Galway considering that they are down a point after the game in Wexford. Those very same circumstances – failure to beat Wexford in Salthill in 2019 – contributed to their eventual exit that year.

Kilkenny can ill-afford defeat either, with a tricky game in Parnell Park ahead of them, though a loss would have less impact for them than it would Galway in the short-term. Realistically, if the notional target in Munster is four points, then in Leinster it is six to be safe. This means that one win from their three games against what we might call ‘competitor teams’ in the province would leave Kilkenny safe. Wexford have just one left and that’s in Nowlan Park. The sky is dark around Boolavogue right now but who knows what twists and turns are ahead. Kilkenny have been spoken of well in recent weeks but, being Devil’s Advocate, they lost in the League semi-final to a Cork team subsequently humbled by Waterford and Limerick. Is it out of the question that they might end up in a winner-takes-all game with Wexford in the last round?