Cahill pleased with application in no-win fixture

By Shane Brophy

It was a case of job done for Tipperary and manager Liam Cahill in their anticipated victory over Laois in the preliminary quarter final of the All-Ireland Championship on Saturday.

“I'm delighted with our application,” admitted the Ballingarry clubman of the positive aspects of the performance.

“We started the match really well, kind of petered out a bit after 15-20 minutes, and then corrected a few little things at half time and put the game to bed early in the second half and gave us an opportunity then to get a bit of time into other guys as well.

“So all in all, a good afternoon's work. Laois, not easy coming off a defeat last weekend, not a nice place to be over the last 6-7 days to try and get their house in order. Being the people they are in Laois and the proud hurling county they are, they battled hard right up to the end.

“We're just glad now to have won qualification to the quarter-final proper next weekend.”

It was almost the perfect way for Tipperary to get through a game they were expected to win comfortably, providing a badly needed run out for many front liners, some of whom hadn’t played competitively in a month.

“We've got a good block of training in since the completion of the Munster Championship,” Cahill revealed.

“The first step was to give fellas a bit of time back, a week’s break to get back into the swing of things and just come down from the exertions of a really intense Munster Championship. So that was priority.

“Then we started to give them a chance to go back to their clubs as well, which is really important.

A number of players got County League action in and got back in among their own at home to come down a little bit.

“Then we ramped it up over the last two weeks and, today, obviously getting through it injury-free as you've said and now it's a case of freshening up for the next six days to the task that lies ahead with Galway.”

Among the other positive aspects from Saturday was getting valuable game time into players who hadn’t featured much in the championship, including Peter McGarry, the former senior footballer, who made his first appearance for the senior hurlers in this game and whose energy was notable.

“That's what we're about,” Cahill said of keeping players on edge.

“We're still keeping one eye on making sure that we're unearthing as many players as we can.

“Peter McGarry had made our matchday 26 for the last two rounds of the Munster Championship, got his little cameo appearance today.

“Joe Fogarty came into our set-up as well. Obviously, players that are in our squad that are working really, really hard, and today was a good opportunity to give them a little bit of game time to make sure that they're firing on all cylinders for either a place next Saturday or an option to come in.”