Cahill urges Tipperary supporters to keep the faith

By Shane Brophy

Tipperary senior hurling manager Liam Cahill has urged supporters to keep the faith as the manner of their exit to the National League in Sunday’s semi-final defeat to Clare has left their pre-championship expectations under a cloud.

The 1-24 to 2-13 defeat left a lot of questions to be answered over the next five weeks until they reappear again in the Munster Championship against Limerick on April 28th and Liam Cahill was bullish that they will be a different team then.

“We will figure it out in time for Limerick on the 28th of April,” he insisted after the game.

“There’s great character in that (dressing) room. We have a great mix of experienced fellas in their twilight years and some good aggressive young lads who have come in in the past few years. There’s a nice mix there, they’re a good tight group and we love working with them. We love coming to the training field with them, myself, and Mikey, and we’re not going to give up on them anytime soon.

“Because this is a new crop of Tipperary hurlers coming, not maybe for this year but I think in the time that we’re here the Tipp team will have transitioned fully.

“So, to the Tipp supporters I would say stick with them. They will come right because what I see in training is not what transpired here today. The day they do bring their training form to the pitch, they’ll be a match for anyone.”

There were eerie similarities in terms of performance to the displays against Waterford and Galway in last years championship, getting off to a slow start, conceding the first eight points, and while they rallied to get back within two early in the second half, only managed two points in the final 29 minutes of match time.

“We trained really well during the week,” Cahill added.

“We came off a reasonable result against Antrim and the start today is the most disappointing thing about it all. If I envisioned anything going wrong, I didn’t envision us being eight points down and waiting until twelve minutes for our first score. I wouldn’t have said that was on the cards coming today, with the way these fellas trained during the week.

“So, look, collectively we’ll have to look at it. and the buck stops with us all.”