The win is all that mattered – Fitzgerald

By Stephen Barry

Niall Fitzgerald won’t be getting carried away with Tipperary’s five-point Munster quarter-final victory over Waterford.

“We scored 15 points. We did OK. I'm not jumping up with joy at the performance. Far from it,” the Tipp manager reflected at full-time at Fraher Field.

“We butchered a lot of chances, we did a lot of silly things, but we did enough and that's all that matters.

“I don't know how many times I played here as a player, and I hated coming here. It's always a tough place to come… There's loads and loads to work on from that performance, but very happy to get the result.”

The first lesson was in game management. Fitzgerald felt that Tipp played in too much of a rush with the wind.

“If you told us before the game that we'd be a point down at half-time playing against that wind, you'd be happy, but we weren't happy really.

“We didn't feel that we controlled the game the way we should. It was like we were playing with a shot clock. We were trying to get shots off too quick at times.

“We had nine or ten turnovers that we didn't need to be giving, and all that was doing was handing opportunities to Waterford to shoot with that breeze. We were a bit disappointed with that.”

Fitzgerald started five championship debutants (Shane Garland, Charlie King, Joe Higgins, Eoin Craddock, and Killian Butler), plus two more off the bench (Mark Corcoran and Paddy Creedon).

“I don't think any of them looked out of place,” he said.

“Joe Higgins in the middle of the field gave a display of fielding.

“Charlie was excellent at wing-back, carried an awful lot of ball, so they all did really well.”

The Tipp boss will hope to have more experience at his disposal for the semi-final against Cork.

“We'll have to see. Steven (O’Brien) and Luke Boland. We're hoping that they're heading in the right direction at this stage.”

That Cork challenge will provide a substantial step up for Tipp. They will meet on Saturday, April 25th, at FBD Semple Stadium.

“They're a Division 1 team now,” said Fitzgerald.

“Cork are probably going the best that they've been going over the last ten years, so it's going to be really hard.

“All we can do is look at our performance and areas that we can improve, but we'll have to improve significantly.”