KILLINAN END - Total reset is needed
With the retirements and injuries, it was always going to be an immensely difficult task for Colm Bonnar especially in such a competitive environment.
No Laois or Westmeath to smoothen the path and sweeten the pill in this province. Kilkenny, by contrast, fail to jump their two biggest hurdles and yet find themselves in a Leinster Final. Wexford lose just one match by a point and find themselves in third. Still, they’ll be happy enough. When the need was greatest, they came up trumps and did so emphatically.
Take out the relatively poor start Wexford endured, and they outscored Kilkenny by ten points odd over the last hour or so of the game. Perhaps they did so in even less time than that. Nicky English commented early on that Wexford had just two points and that this rate of scoring was a huge problem. By the end, those reasonable comments were but a distant memory. That said, Wexford scored 1-21 – just four points more than Galway managed by half-time against Kilkenny. They were good but will need to bring more against better opposition.
Now, if you were to apply the same measure – removing the bad start – to Cork’s performance in Thurles then the beating was merciless indeed. The most benign interpretation might say it was a campaign of mixed fortunes for Tipperary even if all results were of a similar hue in the end.
The Walsh Park game showed promise but looked at in the rear-view mirror it might be reassessed. Waterford, it turns out, were a mirage. Certainly not what they seemed. Hindsight is a great sage, but it should be remarked that their expected impact on the championship was based on limited enough data. They beat a Cork team that had been mauled by Limerick in the All-Ireland Final and did so primarily on the basis of their goal-scoring. They ran riot too against Wexford yet failed to break the twenty-point mark in either game. Disappointment would be an understandable feeling in the south-east but in a such a competitive province the chance to come to the pitch of the battle is limited. Yet, after three round-robin series in Munster they have one win from twelve games. It is difficult not to imagine they should have achieved more than that.
If Waterford were the big disappointment, Tipp’s next opponents were the real success. Limerick remain a mighty team with every prospect of going all the way in the championship, but Clare are the team that has bounced like no other. Bounced, relative to their own performance of previous years when they hurled well only fitfully. It is hard to imagine Clare living with Limerick in the Munster Final but their processing of defeat, should that be their fate, will be as important as winning. They look capable of taking out any opposition outside the province and if the heads are right, they will have a role to play in the summer drama yet. Lohan’s selection last Sunday might too have engendered confidence about what might happen the day Tony Kelly is quiet.
Cork have resurrected themselves and will face the All-Ireland series with some abandon. Yet, a sceptic might look at the two teams they beat in Munster and suggest that it’s indicative of nothing in particular. Did both teams not lose to the other two counties as well? Certainly, they will wait a while to face the sort of paper-thin opposition seen in Thurles last Sunday.
On seeing the Tipp team for the opening game, a friend suggested to me that it was the weakest Tipperary team he remembered, and that would be stretching back some forty year or more. It seemed a harsh way to describe a team that included Barry Heffernan, Ronan Maher, Jason Forde, and a goodly portion of other All-Ireland medallists of recent vintage. But if you accept the veracity of the old one about the proof of the pudding being in its eating then there’s a tricky counter-argument to make.
The bad news is that this could get worse before it gets better. It looks like one of those times such as 1998 and 2007 where a total reset looks in order. It might be hard to see the value of retaining players who are not long-termers. The best-case expectation this year was third place in the group and a spin out in Croke Park towards the end of the championship to garner experience for young players. That might be next year’s target now and maybe doing well to even contemplate it. Certainly, the defensive play that was in evidence against Clare and Cork requires a trip to the drawing board. On the more glass-half-full side of things a little more luck on the injury front would be of some help too.