Mixture of disappointment and relief for Cahill

By Shane Brophy

Tipperary manager Liam Cahill could have saved the cost of an angiogram as his players tested his heart as well as the supporters with their second consecutive championship draw against Waterford at Walsh Park.

“We’re disappointed maybe not to win the game, but relieved to get something out of it as well,” he began.

“I got an angiogram during the week to test my heart – everything is okay. I said I get done before I come down here but it is fairly hectic.”

He added: “When we went two down it looked like the damn had busted and everything was gone and we came back and went three in front again. There was really good character from our boys.”

He added: “You talk about it, you try to visualize it, you try to prepare your players for it, but when it comes, it takes a life of its own.

“We knew the second half was going to be all that it was. It was just that Waterford hurt us in so many areas. If we could have had another option to bring on three or four more subs, we could have done it.

“We seemed to be labouring in so many areas and trying to get a handle on all this Waterford movement, attacking in droves and getting onto breaks and what have you. It was just really frantic.

“Thankfully, we got a got a handle on it there with the number of substitutions and kind of stemmed the tide a little bit and kick for home.

“I’m disappointed probably that we didn't see out the match, to be honest.”

When asked why Tipperary fell away at the start of the second half for the second game in a row, Cahill said: “There's huge ownership in the dressing room – they're really a great bunch of lads to take ownership of performances like that.

“You can look at it wherever you like. In any team, in any grade, you can get away with one or two players struggling at a particular time, but when you have seven or eight struggling at the one time, it’s really difficult in that kind of environment, with such a pace in the game. Inter-county hurling is unforgiving.”

The first half performance was what was looked for in response to the Cork defeat, full of everything that is good about this Tipp team in full flow.

“We came together on Tuesday night and there was a huge disappointment around the performance in general,” Cahill revealed.

“And as I said, it's all player driven in that dressing room. The way they look in at themselves rather than out. And usually when teams do that the excuses evaporate and we'd had no excuses coming today.

We equally would have had no excuses had we been beaten today either.

That performance was a good bit better had we been beaten today.”