Win or bust for Tipp in Wexford

CAMOGIE: Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Senior Championship Preview

WEXFORD v TIPPERARY

Bellefield, Enniscorthy

Saturday 18th June

Throw-in @ 2.00pm

Referee: Liz Dempsey

By Thomas Conway

For Tipperary and for Wexford, this game could not be more consequential.

It could represent a tipping point, in either direction, for whichever team wins or loses. A draw might just suffice to keep each side within technical range of a knock-out spot (depending on results elsewhere), but realistically, it won’t be enough. This is black and white, winner-takes-all stuff. Lose and you’re effectively gone, exiled from the 2022 championship on the 18th of June, hopes of Croke Park glory crushed before midsummer’s day.

For a Tipperary team which promised so much in the lead up to this year’s competition, departing the championship at such an early stage would be sickening. Should they lose to Wexford, their season will go down as a failure, a year in which something went terribly wrong.

Underwhelming performances in their first three games have prompted serious questions: did they prime themselves for the wrong moment or hit their peak too early? Has the psychological pressure of being big-time championship contenders weighed too heavily on their shoulders? Or is the best yet to come? Is there a kick in this team, a mid-season surge which will catapult them to the stars? Can they rise to the challenge?

Burgess-Duharra midfielder Caoimhe Maher, who is now a seasoned campaigner at inter-county level, believes they can. Maher was one of Tipp’s few leading lights in a display against Waterford last time out, which felt flat and disoriented. She clocked in with three points, but she also walked off the pitch firm in the knowledge that Tipp could still secure a place in the knockout stages. Maher isn’t delusional - she acknowledges that Tipp have failed to ignite in recent games, admitting that the reasons for their under-par performances haven’t been entirely clear.

“There are no two ways about it, something hasn’t clicked, something hasn’t been right over the last few games,” Maher admitted.

“And we’ve struggled to even understand why that was, to be honest. But I wouldn’t necessarily write it down to just confidence or anything like that. It’s something which we haven’t necessarily been able to pinpoint.

“We know, as players, in those last few games, we weren’t all on the same wave-length. But right now, I don’t think there are any of us sitting there believing that we can’t do this, believing that it isn’t possible. Even coming off the field last Sunday week after the Waterford game, the first thing I said to the girls was that we can do this. We’ve put way too much work in.”

Overturning Wexford, down in the sunny south-east, will not be easy. The Slaneysiders edged past Clare by the minimum in their last outing, a stoppage-time Ciara O’Connor point allowing them to steal victory in Sixmilebridge. The win will almost certainly have emboldened them. They now sit fourth in the Group 1 table, a point behind Dublin and a point ahead of Tipp.

Qualification is within their grasp, and as long as Anais Curran continues to bang over the frees and the O’Connor sisters (Aoife and Ciara) marshal the middle third, Wexford will be a tricky obstacle to overcome.

But Maher believes Tipp can do it. She thinks they need to “get back to basics”, to just let go of any pressure and start enjoying their camogie again. The UL graduate, who now works with pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson, has an interesting perspective on life as an inter-county camogie player. It requires meteoric levels of dedication and commitment, she admits, but it also demands something else - an addiction to adrenaline, a desire to perform under pressure at the highest possible level.

“It’s about getting a balance more so than anything else,” Caoimhe added.

“People should have no illusions - it’s hard work, it’s a lot of time, it takes a lot out of you as a person, you don’t get much personal time, all of those things. But we’re all there because we want to do it and it’s what we enjoy. We enjoy operating at that level.”

Whatever level Tipperary operate at next weekend, Bill Mullaney’s side will have to generate a win. The performance need not be pretty or sleek, it just has to ensure that Tipp depart the south-east with all three points. If not, then it’s curtains.