Cahill can’t understand the lack of energy in his players on match-day

By Shane Brophy

It has been a common theme of Tipperary’s big game defeats over the last twelve months, a flatness in the performance and it was once again in evidence in the loss to Limerick on Sunday.

“Again, our energy levels I cannot understand it,” said a bemused Liam Cahill in the aftermath of the fifteen point defeat.

“We just seem to be that little bit off the pace.

“I’m looking in at a team that were just hurling in hope. That is an awful place to be when you are coming into the lions den here to the All-Ireland champions, to their backyard you need to be absolutely convinced that you are going to take that ball whether it be in a ruck or out of the air or taking on your man, you just have to be so sure of what you are about.”

What Cahill is seeing in training is not what is being brought to big match-days as they struggle to understand why this trend is continuing.

“Again, I say it, these boys are training fierce well,” he revealed.

“But I don’t know what the case it of then coming to the matchday field, it just doesn’t seem to be happening for them.”

He added: “But look, we will stay with them, there are a lot of newer guys in there today again.

“I suppose in hindsight we have to put real perspective on this, we made massive gains very quickly last year, but it is really coming to fruition to everybody that this thing is going to take a little bit of time until this team totally transitions into a new established side. There are a good few lessons for everybody involved to make that happen.”

It wasn’t a spectacular Munster Championship game that we have been used to in recent years, an encounter littered with mistakes and despite Tipp playing second fiddle were still just four points adrift on 44 minutes.

“We felt we had a chance, but we always felt we were hurling at half-throttle really,” said the Tipp boss.

“We felt we were still in the game and then the net rattles with the Gillane goal really sucks the life out of you. We didn’t really respond well after the Gillane goal to be fair.

He added: “You have to take everything that’s on offer at this level. I know the wind was difficult, but I felt our energy of supporting the man on the ball and getting to breaks in the second half, there was an amount of breaks picked up easily by Limerick around that middle area we couldn’t get a handle on.

“It’s there. There’s no doubt we have the players, it’s to get them all switched on, on the same day is the thing.

“We’re going to work hard over the next couple of days now to try and make that happen for a massive game in Walsh Park in six days’ time.

“We’ve to bring everything that wasn’t there today. We need to bring massive energy and aggression.

“It’s a game we just have to throw off the shackles and have a good think about our personnel for the week. There’ll have to be consequences after today. Some players, it just didn’t run for them and they’re going to have to make way for the next fella to give them a chance.

“There was a lot of talk during the week about Tipp not having a settled team. That doesn’t really concern me. We felt we had a very settled team coming in today with the way we trained. We loaded up our team as best we could to tackle Limerick in the areas that we knew they’d give us concern and put legs and speed into our team. That’s what we’ll try and do again now for six days’ time.”