More Gravel and Spit

KILLINAN END

There was a certain amount of disdain for Dónal Óg Cusack and Patrick Horgan when they commented on Tipp’s championship prospects in recent months. Horgan, as he was entitled to do, suggested they would not be among the three qualifiers. Cusack spoke of how Tipp were the quickest to dip and the quickest to rise of all the counties. Time has proven both of them correct, and trying to make sense of it is no small task. There is also the broader question of the extent to which this shines a spotlight on the achievements of last year. Does a title require a reasonably vigorous defence to be more worthy, or does it robustly stand alone?

Anthony Daly suggested that Tipp’s travails show how great the Kilkenny and Limerick teams were to complete four-in-a-rows when the experiences of Clare and Tipp in the last two years have shown how difficult even a single retention is.

First up, the greatness of the two aforementioned teams is certainly beyond question. While you can question Kilkenny’s path through Leinster back in the day, which surely eased their route somewhat, the best way to understand the nature of their achievement is perhaps through Tipperary. That county took Kilkenny to the edge in a few All-Ireland Finals and beat them in a few more. Clearly, it was a very talented team but not one that could reach Kilkenny’s level of consistency. That is a basic requirement for greatness, a benchmark that Kilkenny cleared with something to spare. Would Tipp have been able to survive a provincial meltdown like the 2012 Leinster Final and come back to win the All-Ireland?

As for Limerick, only time will really give them their due credit. Their team came into its peak at perhaps the right time, when they could win three All-Ireland Finals in 21 months, two of them through the straight knockout system. But their last two championships of the four-in-a-row were extraordinary feats of brilliance and consistency. It was a run replete with some withering performances. Cork ran into a whirlwind in the 2021 final, while a Tipp team packed with All-Ireland medal winners lost the second half of the Munster Final by 2-17 to 1-5, having been ten points up.

Four successive All-Irelands and six Munster Championships on the bounce in such a competitive era is remarkable. These are the glowering shadows in which Tipperary — and Clare in 2024 — won All-Ireland titles and failed to emerge from the province a year later. Does this lessen the achievements of Tipperary? Does it make it a “lucky” All-Ireland title? The answer to this is probably “no”. It certainly does lessen the reputation of the team for posterity. How could it not? There’s a reason people talk in hushed tones of the 1949-51 or 1961-65 Tipp teams. Consistent and brilliant achievement writes its own epitaph.

But what Tipp achieved in 2025 will stand the test of time too. Who knows where that Cork team’s reputation will end? Maybe beating them in a final will, when the sun sets on this era, loom large for those in Saffron & Blue or Blue & Gold. Tipp’s win in Ennis and their comeback off the ropes against Kilkenny — even if necessitated by their own periods of hibernation — will be smiled on by history. The destruction of Cork will deserve due credit too, especially if this Cork team embraces greatness themselves. Clare will always be the team which stood up to an exceptional Limerick team when all around them cowered.

Yet, from Tipp’s perspective, it would be remiss not to say that this was a pitiful title defence. The game against Cork was marked by a complete implosion in the middle third, with the ball being hit time and again to unmarked Cork players. The Waterford game was a strange momentum-driven contest which should have been won. Yet, given the subsequent Déise performances against Cork and Limerick, maybe a draw was reasonable. Even coming in a bit undercooked against Cork in the first round might be understandable since the Rebel County had a good run in the League.

However, the performance against Clare was the one that beat Banagher altogether. The same destruction in the middle third was again a key takeaway of the day. Unmarked Clare men scoring points for sport. Eoin Kelly — the Waterford version — spoke recently of modern hurling and how players are getting seven or eight points in a game as there is little or no marking. Something certainly is very different from his time — a comparison of the average scorelines of the great Kilkenny and Limerick teams mentioned confirms that. But even he would have wondered at the gifts being showered on Diarmuid Stritch in the middle of the park. Inevitably, light might be shone on the futures of some of the more senior Tipp players like John McGrath, Jason Forde, Ronan Maher and Mikey Breen. But these men operated at either end of the pitch. Tipp’s problem lay in between, where they were simply outfought by a ravenous Banner team. Johnny Cash might have called it “gravel in your gut and spit in your eye” — call it what you like, but until Tipp develop some of that stomach for battle, the health of the under-age conveyor belt will continue to be nothing more than a warm glow on a distant horizon. The faint promise of things to come, but no more than that.