Tipp’s home grown magic mushrooms

KILLINAN END

Amid much of the shock reaction to Tipperary’s All-Ireland win, a nugget of wisdom emerged which claimed that, of all counties, Tipp historically do not emerge from the pack to win unexpected All-Ireland titles. That is to say, a title for which they were not clearly in the reckoning at the beginning of the year.

Unlike the Cork ‘mushrooms’, to recall Jim Barry’s famous and forever-echoing dictum from the ‘60s, when Cork demonstrated the capacity to come from nowhere – and with a share of luck - to win an All-Ireland, Tipp are apparently slow burners. According to this view Tipp traditionally needed to springboard along the lines of 1987/88 before the victory of ’89. That it has been an oft repeated belief does not make it any more robust when held up to scrutiny.

As recently as 2018 Tipp failed to win a game in the Munster Championship. It was an unlucky campaign in that two games were drawn, and another lost by just two points. Still, it was the subject of lots of sneering at the time. In the week of this year’s All-Ireland former Kilkenny hurler, Richie Hogan, could envisage only Ronan Maher from Tipp getting on the Cork team. It is hard to imagine that this mindset would have looked any more favourably on relative comparisons on the evening Cork won the Munster Championship seven years ago.

As Tipp entered the championship under changed management in 2019 previews were already dragging out the old chestnut about a lack of pace in the Tipp team. Nobody had them as All-Ireland winners. Yes, the team was full of All-Ireland medallists but so it was too a year earlier. Admittedly if you were positing cases of extremely unlikely All-Ireland titles this one would not be the first exhibit.

But the Blue & Gold back catalogue has a few exhibits. Indeed, you could go so far as to argue that every All-Ireland that Tipp won between 1925 and 1950 was unannounced. One of Tipp’s greatest All-Irelands came in 1937 and was out of the blue. The context is worth considering. In the Munster finals of 1935 & ‘36 Tipp had been on the end of comprehensive defeats against a Limerick team which in this time enjoyed a reputation similar to that county’s great team of recent years. The Shannonsiders were prevented completing three in a row 1934-36 only by a one-point defeat by Kilkenny in the 1935 All- Ireland final. The Black & Amber had been demolished in the rematch a year later with Limerick’s champion team only adding to their glamour and sense of other-worldliness but doing a US tour in the spring of 1936.

It is difficult to exaggerate the extent of Tipp’s outsider billing when facing Limerick in the Munster final at the Cork Athletic Grounds in July 1937. Limerick has superstars up front in Mick & John Mackey, as well as free-scoring forwards in Dave Clohessy and Paddy McMahon who had a fearsome goal-scoring record. On this day, Tipp’s defence was as watertight as it could be against such a powerful forward unit. This was a back-line which blossomed in Mid Tipperary and included Jim Lanigan, Ger Cornally, and John Maher of Sarsfields as well as Dinny Gorman of Holycross and Johnny Ryan of Moycarkey. At the other end of the field, they could rely on the “brains of Tom Doyle, the dash of Butler Coffey” as well as the wiles of Killea’s Tommy Treacy and Moycarkey’s Paddy ‘Sweeper’ Ryan. The team also included Jimmy Cooney of Carrick who would achieve notoriety the following year in a scéal eile when Clare successfully objected on a technicality to his presence on the Tipp team. When you read the names, all of which have stood the test of time supremely well, it is easy to ignore that according to The Irish Press it was “one of the biggest surprises of recent years”.

In the subsequent All-Ireland Final Tipp faced Kilkenny, champions of two years earlier, so this was not a handy run to an unlikely title. The final took place in the shiny and new Fitgerald Stadium, Killarney, when issues around rebuilding works in Croke Park meant that the new Cusack Stand was not ready. The Munster Final had attracted a record crowd, and despite the smaller stadium by the Reeks the All-Ireland attendance record also fell.

A Tipp team that had “struggled in recent years” faced a Kilkenny team which had all the experience and quite a bank of achievement to boost their confidence. Despite Limerick’s presence, the Cats of the 1937 final could look back on three All-Ireland titles won in the previous five years. Yet, in a display not far off the 2025 or 2019 second-half vintages this previously unheralded Tipp team swept Kilkenny aside. The fourteen-point margin matched those against the same opposition in the 1964 and 2019 finals. In an era when Moycarkey and Sarsfields held a duopoly on the Dan Breen cup the team included just two from North Tipp – Roscrea’s Jack Gleeson and Newport’s Jimmy ‘Butler’ Coffey. It stands alone between 1930 and 1945 in Tipp’s roll of honour. Let nobody say that we don’t do the mushroom trick in Tipp.