Kelly thrilled with character in must-win game

By Dean Goodison

Coach Denis Kelly was beaming after Tipperary battled back to take a crucial three points against Wexford.

With manager Bill Mullaney banished from the side-line serving a one match ban, the Toomevara clubman was thrilled with the character shown by the side in a game they needed to win.

“We were delighted with it,” he said of the late revival against Wexford.

“There was real honesty shown there, you know, ten minutes to go it didn’t look good for us. We made a few positional changes, sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.

“Cait Devane coming to eleven there, got two massive points for us, brought us back into the game. We needed something at that stage. We were lacking a bit of energy, but we are just delighted to get over the line and that was a massive, massive game.

“There were some things we weren’t happy with, maybe some frees went against us and different things, but we stayed at it, there’s real character in that group. We knew it was there and just waiting for it to come out. It definitely came out in the last ten or fifteen minutes.”

Tipperary pushed right up on Wexford, taking away some of the comfort and numbers in the hosts defence, Kelly said it was a critical move.

“We knew we had better players individually, but we just weren't putting it together,” he admitted.

“We pushed on, we just decided fifteen minutes and they were going down with injuries, some proper, some maybe not so proper, they were cutting out time.

“We said we just needed to go for it, because you know a loss here and we were practically gone out the championship, we just had to go for it and we did, and look at it the girls came up trumps for us to finish up.”

On why Tipperary were able to finish the job this time, after struggling to get over the line previously, Kelly said:

“It’s hard to out a finger on it, the girls have been training really well but haven’t been bringing it to the pitch. Today they brought the aggression, I thought our first half was fabulous, we brought real aggression, we were winning those rough balls and everything else, eventually we did grind them down.

“They had bodies behind the ball, but we did grind them down and we got our few scores. We were lucky to get over the line, no doubt about it but delighted with the character the women showed.

“We’ve a weeks break and then we are into Cork, so we’ll get a few days to recover, that’s massive again, we are not at the same level we were at maybe previous years but look it, as you seen today there, this will take the weight off our shoulders now.

“We are out of relegation danger, and we can really have a right good crack at this, the way it has been going, there has been ups and downs, if we could play as well as we can play against Cork we might be in with a shout.”