Tipp are in a bad place when hurling in ‘hope’

By Shane Brophy

Tipperary travelled to Limerick on Sunday more in ‘hope’ than expectation. Well, that was the feeling amongst the fans at least, but it should have been different amongst the players, but it wasn’t.

It is hard to disagree with manager Liam Cahill when he stated in the aftermath of this one-sided fifteen point defeat his team were “just hurling in hope.” Tipperary is not a county that hurls in ‘hope’, the tradition states that Tipperary fear no-one but there was an element of fear in how they are playing at the moment.

Following the disappointing performance in the league semi-final to Clare, the ‘hope’ was that the five weeks in the meantime were where Tipperary would fine-tune things and come out in the championship firing, but it didn’t manifest itself on Sunday.

Even when tied with Limerick at 0-6 apiece after 24 minutes, there was a sense of inevitability about the outcome. To defeat a team as good as Limerick, even not at their best as they were for the first half hour when Tipp’s pressure admittedly forced them into mistakes, you have to take your chances.

Sean Hayes, who started well with an assist for a Mark Kehoe point and won a free which Jason Forde converted, had a gilt-edged goal chance on 22 minutes but not taking the ball in hand first time and controlling it on the hurl allowed Nickie Quaid that split second more to come off his line and make the block.

Then there were Jason Forde’s 2 missed 65s, admittedly into a rising breeze but central enough to be chances you have to take. Both misses came off 65s where Jake Morris was blocked down twice by Dan Morrissey. Indeed, the Tipp vice-captain was blocked down three times in the opening half as he didn’t have the spring to make the extra half-yard to reduce the risk of being blocked.

This highlighted another leaden-footed performance, similar to the championship losses to Waterford and Galway last year. Once again, there was no spark to Tipp’s play, no hunger, passion, desire, and feverish determination to win the ball.

When they do have the ball, they don’t make enough right decisions in how to use it. However, options are limited as the movement off the ball is very poor, particularly from puckouts where Barry Hogan was looking out at statues for the most part. Ironically, Tipperary did well enough on their own long puckouts in terms of winning possession, it was from there where the problems are.

There were more occasions than usual to do it as Limerick took risks in possession in the first half that Tipp weren’t sharp enough to turnover regularly, bar when Eoghan Connolly made an interception which led to Hayes’ goal chance.

Going back to the Waterford game last year and bar the first two games of this years league where Tipp looked energetic against Dublin and Galway, it has been dead on their feet hurling for much of the last twelve months.

Manager Liam Cahill was perplexed, struggling to understand why they aren’t bringing their training energy to the match-day field. Sometimes it can be put down to over-training, but it is now too much of a trend for that. It now appears more psychological, that players are doubting themselves going out onto the field, that is not a good space to be.

We know the modern game doesn’t play to the strengths of Tipperary’s style, but we thought in the early games of last years championship that they were adapting but they have regressed. Playing a sweeper against Limerick was never going to work as they are too used to playing around that, and it is a role that Bryan O’Mara is not comfortable win.

It is hard to think that in terms of the gameplan that it centred around high direct ball into the Limerick full and half-back lines, meat and drink to physically dominant players, but still the effort levels of the Tipperary forwards to try and win what ball was coming their way weren’t of the required levels either.

It meant sending for Noel McGrath and Patrick Maher once more and the Tipp greats once again showed their class with early second half scores, which for a brief period led to a murmur of ‘hope’ among the small travelling support in the almost 34,000 crowd.

However, that ‘hope’ was extinguished in the 44th minute when the Tipp defence failed to deal with a miss-hit Diarmaid Byrnes free with Aaron Gillane picking up possession around the 21 before drilling a shot past Barry Hogan in the Tipp goal. The power of the shot was what did the keeper, but it was one that could have been stopped considering the distance it came from.

And as Limerick did when they got their first goal in similar circumstances against Clare a week previous, they smelt blood, but disappointingly met limited resistance from Tipperary where Johnny Ryan, Ronan Maher, Conor Bowe and Eoghan Connolly came out of the game where they felt they had contributed something positive.

The Munster Championship in most years is a competition of fine margins where qualification could come down to score difference and if Tipp were to turn things around in their remaining three games and end up in a tie, this hammering could prove decisive and that feeble response after the concession of the first goal could prove doubly costly.