Hurt galvanised group to turn things around - Forde

By Shane Brophy

Liam Cahill is in the middle of his press conference when Jason Forde takes his seat beside his Tipperary manager who was full of praise for the leadership qualities of the Silvermines clubman this season.

“This man here (Jason Forde) to my right, we sat down in Lár na Páirce at the start of last year; we had a good chat and, lo and behold, the resilience of this man with, with his friends and colleagues to come back and especially the way Jason has performed all year. He's been incredible.

“What a player for Tipperary hurling over the last 10…how many seasons, Jayo?”

“Thirteen!”, replies Forde.

“Thirteen seasons, Cahill continued, “and getting better. He's like a good wine. He gets better with age. Incredible!”

So had Jason any reservations about possibly calling time with Tipperary at the end of the last campaign?

“It was a very honest conversation,” Forde said of his meeting with Cahill.

“After the season finished, you were meeting people and they were saying where you going to bother going back, nearly writing you off that you were finished.

“When I met Liam, I just said we couldn’t leave things like that, the year that we had. Having played for Tipp for thirteen seasons and winning All-Irelands and things like that, to leave it on that note, it just wouldn't have felt right.

“And you could see the younger players that were coming. When I met Liam, you got a really good sense that there was going to be no stone left unturned to get the team back.

“You need a bit of luck in these situations too, there was nobody talking about winning All-Irelands. Can we get this team and get a bit of pride back in the jersey, get out of Munster and maybe reconnect with the Tipperary supporters.

“A lot of tough months to put down last year after that but it just makes it all the sweeter.”

2025 was a transformation for not just the Tipperary team, but for many of the players, including Forde who praised his manager for turning the teams fortunes around so quickly.

“It’s a number of things,” he said of what changed.

“This is Liam’s third year with this group of players, couple of younger players that we are after finding, exceptional young players, three players in Darragh, Sam and Oisin that we didn’t have last year.

“And we just went back to the grindstone, we trained really, really hard. We've been finishing all the games really strong, and I put that down to work our S&Cs have done with us. When it comes down to the last ten minutes, we back that we have the legs, the boys coming off the bench to finish the job as well. It's a number of things.”

The 31-year-old also admitted the hurt and almost embarrassment at the nature of some of their performances and results last year spurred them on through the early months of the campaign to get the momentum going.

“We were so hurt after last year,” he revealed.

“Tipp is obviously such a mad hurling county and a lot of us are living close to the big towns and stuff and that's where you're going around and you're meeting people.

“I remember meeting Jack Morris a couple of weeks after and you're nearly ashamed going around to show your face around because the manner in which we went out.

“And we said as a group all year, there's nobody going to come and save us. We had to go back and put in the work and drag ourselves up out of it and thank God we did.”