Proud Cahill of how players responded to a multitude of set-backs

By Shane Brophy

Tipperary manager Liam Cahill would have been entitled to any number of emotions following last Saturday’s dramatic draw with Waterford.

Happy with the much improved performance, relieved to have earned a draw in the circumstances they were in late in the game, or disappointed not to have secured the win if some big decisions had gone their way, but he settled on pride.

“I’m very, very proud,” he admitted in terms of the response to the loss against Limerick.

“It was a tough six days.

“I’m really delighted that the players and we as a group got our heads around a performance last weekend that wasn’t acceptable. We have no issue with that. Some of the analysis was very warranted, absolutely it was warranted, but some of it wasn’t.

“I’m really proud of the way we battled right to the end, from a game that was more or less gone from us.

“We were given chances to win the game prior to that, to be fair, but really proud of the way we as a group, this bunch of players, as management and backroom team, everyone associated with the set-up circled the wagons this week and really grateful to the supporters in the stands today, they were absolutely superb. They’ll back this team to the hilt every day once we fight. That’s the main thing. And we fought for everything today. We as a group fought and that’s all we look for.”

He added: “We’re disappointed we didn’t get a result obviously. We came down for the two points. Grateful to get one at the end.

“To be fair, I celebrated it as if it was a win but really what I was celebrating was the fight in my team. I wasn’t celebrating the one point, I wasn’t celebrating the so-called narrative of getting out of jail, I was celebrating the fight in us, in our players in Tipperary.”

The Ballingarry clubman admitted it was a tough six days to analyse why the Limerick game went so poorly and to rectify the gameplan and the confidence ahead of a difficult trip to Waterford.

“Your emotions go bananas when things go wrong on the big stage in a Tipperary jersey,” Cahill revealed.

“We as a group never intend to not fight or die in our boots on the field. We never intend to do that. We always intend to come and make the people of Tipperary proud to look in at their flagship team perform.

“So, we took massive ownership of what happened last weekend. We took massive ownership of it because we had to. We own that for the rest of our lives.

“I own, maybe, some of my comments in the aftermath. I own that and it weighed heavy.

“We just draw a line under that now and go forward with this performance and still try and make sure that we qualify out of this province of death in Munster. Let's see can we gather a couple more points. There are four more still on offer.

“If we can perform again, and we'll have to perform to a real decent level again, even better than we performed today obviously to have any chance of progressing in the championship. That is our golden objective over the next two weeks.”

There was so much to like about this Tipperary performance, not perfect, but had elements of quality as well as grit, heart, and desire to endear themselves to the supporters going forward.

Tipp’s much debated panel depth has been questioned but the impact from the bench was notable with 1-5 coming from the players introduced.

“Without our bench today, we'd be going home empty-handed,” Cahill added.

“The ever-warrior Bonner came on there, John McGrath was top-class, young Kenneally, Darragh Stakelum made his championship debut, he was excellent today. He never gave up.”

There was many leading performances from captain Ronan Maher, Michael Bree, the returning Cathal Barrett but the Tipperary manager reserved special mention for Mark Kehoe, not only for his four points from play, but also won crucial possession late in the game which yielded scores.

“I coached Mark Kehoe since he was 14 years of age and Mark today just became a real leader on the field” Cahill said.

“He stayed going right to the end. He battled. He told me that Monday night, that he’d give it everything to make sure that this team rectifies itself.”

The game was controversial also with a number of big decisions or non-decisions by the referee, but the Tipp manager wasn’t going to get too drawn on them.

“You will never hear me giving out about referees because it’s a thankless job. Would we have been hard done by going away? In the heat of battle, looking back on it now, probably not. Did we deserve a draw? We probably did if you weigh up everything,” he said.