Tynan and co restore pride in the blue and gold jersey

By Shane Brophy

Tipperary brought the fight against Waterford on Saturday evening, and none epitomised that more than Alan Tynan’s whose determination and hard running drew the foul with the last play of the game to earn his side a deserved draw.

“Utter relief,” was how he described getting what could be a vital result from the game.

“Going down the home stretch, there was four in it. I don’t think we ever thought it was gone away from us. In fairness to Liam, Mikey, and the lads, they said no matter the scoring in the game was, we’d always be in it.

“We fully believed out there today and I think we fairly showed it in the last two to three minutes. We fought back from the four-point lead, and I’m delighted for Seánie Kenneally to come in. What a young man to get a goal like that in his second ever championship performance. It shows serious character coming in off the bench.

“John McGrath making a serious impact. Pure relief, I suppose, but look something to build on now going into our two home games in Thurles and hopefully we bring a performance like that.”

Not only had this group of Tipperary players and management have to recover from the poor performance and heavy loss, but they also had to overcome many set-backs in the same, some outside of their control, but some also self-inflicted, but they never looked like losing their focus.

“It has been a pretty tough week, I won’t lie,” Tynan added.

“We didn’t do ourselves justice last week and even thinking back to it you still get caught up in it.

“I think the six-day turnaround was good for us because it didn’t give us a chance to dwell on what happened. We went in Monday night back to a gym session and we just had a chat as a team and as a management group and we just said, ‘We’re going to go for this, what have we got to lose?

“There was no point holding back and just play with a freedom. I think we did do that for large parts of the game today and looking back we would be very disappointed with the goals. “Looking back, the first two were quite harsh on us but the third one was a complete lack of concentration.

He added: “I think we showed the character that’s in there, the leaders like Noel (McGrath), Ronan (Maher), Jake (Morris), talking all week, lifting our spirits. They’ve been there before and they’re the lads you want to be go into the trenches with every time you go out onto the field.

“You see even Bonner (Maher) there coming on and winning the dirty ball. That’s something we would have struggled with last week and it was good that we won a couple of those that was disappointing last week. Look, good to right a few wrongs from last week and a lot to build on going forward.”

After two games in six days, Tynan is pleased to have a breather this week as they looked to refocus for their tow home games against Cork and Clare.

“It’s a massive couple of weeks for this group,” added the Roscrea clubman.

“We don’t want to let last week define us as players and people. Bonner and Noel (McGrath), these guys have three All-Ireland medals, and we don’t want their names to be tarnished like the way they were among people in Ireland and Tipperary over the last week. I said it last year that we’ll fight to the bitter end, and I think we showed that today and hopefully we’ll drive it on over the next couple of weeks.

“I don’t want to go back on last week too much but that was a word we spoke about a lot during the week, pride and fight. That’s all Tipperary people really want to see, and I think we brought it in spades there today.

“Look, delighted to put a bit of pride in the jersey but overall, we still didn’t come away with the win, which we could be kicking ourselves with, but it’s a lot better than last week. We’re building on and hopefully we can get two good results in our next two matches.”