Toughest campaign so far for Power

By Shane Brophy

David Power has enjoyed a lot of great days managing Tipperary teams, but he admits this season has been his most difficult in management.

The Kilsheelan/Kilcash clubman guided the Tipperary minors to All-Ireland glory in 2011 and in 2020 managed the seniors to an historic first Munster title in 85 years on the same weekend as the centenary of Bloody Sunday.

However, since then the trajectory has been largely downward, including with relegations to division 4 of the league in 2021 and this year, in between a promotion campaign in 2022.

“Results wise it has probably been the toughest season,” Power admitted.

“From a player’s point of view, it hasn’t been any different in terms of, I haven’t been using the missing players as an excuse and I am not going to start now, but losing Bill (Maher), Robbie (Kiely) at the start of the season, it is hard to replace those players.

“Then we had the serious knock with Conor (Sweeney), never mind his playing ability but his leadership in the dressing room as well, so it hasn’t been simple.

“Who I really feel sorry for are the inexperienced players who we are having to throw in at the deep end. Ideally, we were hoping to be in a situation where we would gradually bring them through with the help of the experienced players but that hasn’t happened.

“Every night we have up to 35 players training, and even when the results are going badly, they were still there. The big thing is we are sticking together. It can be easy to start blaming each other but we all have to take responsibility and even in the last week we sat down and spoke to the players about different things we can try and improve on.

“Last weekend, we would have been happy with the two sessions we have had. The training sessions haven’t been what we have been showing in matches so hopefully we will start doing that next Sunday.”

In Tipperary’s last league game, a defeat to Westmeath, the team contained just three players which started the Munster Final victory in November 2020. Such a turnover of players even the strong footballing counties would struggle to contend with.

With the retirements of Robbie Kiely, Brian Fox and Philip Austin in recent years and Bill Maher working abroad this year, Tipp have lost a lot of pace from the half back line and the plan was to change their gameplan this year to go more direct into a big full-forward line but the injuries to Conor Sweeney and Steven O’Brien, and Sean O’Connor loss of form has led to that plan having to be ripped up.

“We have tried four or five difference systems throughout the league and that shouldn’t be happening,” Power revealed.

“We have been forced into that. You can be very dogmatic and say this is the way we are playing, it doesn’t matter who we have, but you have work to the players strengths as well.

“It was fairly obvious what we were trying to do at the start of the yearand arguably the two strongest teams we were able to field were in the McGrath Cup against Waterford and Limerick. We blew Waterford away; they weren’t able to handle us.

“It disappointing that you set out to do something but unfortunately we haven’t been able to see it out.”

He added: “Also losing Steven (O’Brien) and Conal Kennedy, two big men and ball winners, you can interchange in different positions, and we don’t have that option when they are not there.

“Then you are throwing in novices and expect them to do things and it is not fair on them. That is the hand we have been dealt with.

“The lads have been working extremely hard and will try and get a performance, but we need a win, I would rather have a bad performance and win than a good performance and losing on Sunday.

“We still can have a big summer, so we have to remain positive.”