Looking to the Future
By Shane Brophy
Bleak, just bleak, and that’s not just the weather. The wind chill factor for the last week made it feel more like winter than late spring which provides the appropriate backdrop to the mood in the county as the flagship Tipperary senior hurlers championship campaign has come to an early end.
For the second time in three years, it is over before the final round of the Munster Championship with a daunting trip to Limerick to close out a disappointing campaign on Sunday.
In some ways it feels worse than 2024 because this year Tipp were defending All-Ireland champions and had a strong platform coming in.
However, that doesn't guarantee anything as Clare found out last year, but a stronger title defence would have been the minimum that would have been hoped for.
Instead, it was a campaign that never got going, bar the first half of the Waterford game did we see Tipperary anywhere near their flowing best.
Tipp’s campaign was too topsy-turvy to come close to making a strong title defence, a lot of the factors that we key in last years All-Ireland success disappointingly absent in this campaign.
However, there is still one game to go, and while it might be a dead duck for Tipperary, it is still important in setting the tone for next year. Clare were in the same boat last year going to Limerick already eliminated and came away with a win.
Tipperary manager Liam Cahill and his management will get an insight into the mindset of players as to who is prepared to dig in despite the lost cause, and whom he can rely upon going forward when times are tough again.
“It's really difficult. What do you do?” said the Tipperary manager following the eleven point defeat to Clare on Saturday evening.
“You go down to take on Limerick, one of the greatest teams over the last decade.
“We just have to do our best to try and get in behind the lads now as best we can for the next couple of days and try and go to Limerick and really try and redeem our name and our identity of some sort because today it's really, really disappointing.”
He added: “We’ll have to look at giving experience to younger guys.
“I'd be very wary about this talk of this conveyor belt of underage success in Tipperary. I'm not trying to diminish the work that's being done at underage. It's absolutely exceptional and there are some really good young players coming through. But the jury will be out until they're able to perform consistently at the top level here.
“We've seen what has happened last year with one or two really good under-20s coming. They're finding it really hard to back it up this year.
“It's a totally different environment when you come out of an underage structure into an inter-county senior set-up.”