Where did it go wrong for Tipp in 2026?

As the dust settles on Tipperary’s disappointing defence of the All-Ireland Senior Hurling title, the post-mortem can take place as to the how and why the team failed to perform anywhere near the heights of last years improvement and ultimately success.

By Shane Brophy

The Tipperary management will, if they haven’t already done so with it fresh in their minds, trawl over the coals of the campaign as to what went wrong and why the team didn’t hit their mental and physical peak all year.

So how and why did things not work out?

Disease of Success

The first salient reason is success itself. It can be poisonous if not addressed in the right way and while manager Liam Cahill mentioned prior to the start of the championship that the players had carried themselves since returning to training in December as not feeling like defending All-Ireland champions, it was only when the ball was thrown in come this championship would we really know if the hunger was there, and among too many of the players it was not.

Motivation

The humiliation of 2024 was a powerful motivator that drove the side through the hard training slog in the depths of winter and sustained them right through the campaign. The benefits of which were obvious from day 1 in the league in Galway when they made a statement. Their conditioning levels were impressive but they never got to the same level this year, and it couldn’t be as they were coming in off a different situation but that Tipp still had that flatness come championship was concerning.

The management did everything right in terms of ensuring Tipp weren’t too far behind coming into this season by getting their post All-Ireland holiday and medal presentations done in November so when collective training was allowed to resume, they were starting at the same point as everyone else, but in many ways they were already behind and never caught up.

In a lot of ways it was very similar to the 2024 campaign when Tipp’s moderate league form carried into the championship. Liam Cahill admitted he knew in mid-March that year the team weren’t where he wanted them to be, and one wonders if he felt the same at any point through this league campaign.

League benefits

It’s only in the aftermath of a campaign can you accept reality. Tipperary were always going to find in hard to replicate the league campaign from 2025. This years campaign of three wins, one draw, and two losses led to a solid third placed finish but in none of the games did we see Tipp in full flow or flex their muscles in any way that their best was coming.

The compressed calendar and the closeness of the league to the championship now means that league form carries over to Munster and it is almost impossible to switch things up in two to four week period.

In the league, Tipp were outplayed for large parts of the round 1 game against a youthful Galway but it was their experience that got them through in the end. The Offaly game was arguably Tipp’s best performance, ruthlessly putting the faithful to the sword in Tullamore.

However, the warning lights began to flicker six days later when Tipp lost to Cork in a repeat of the All-Ireland Final. Over 32,000 were present in Pairc Ui Chaoimh and while the contest was close for the most part, there was never any sense Tipp were going to win with the team that was picked, although injury played a part. In hindsight it might have been best to go strong and keep the pressure on the Cork throat.

In 2025, Tipp’s statement league win was the home game the Rebels in February, coming off the humiliation in the championship the previous year. There was no statement league performance in a positive sense anyway, but there was in the negative with the 0-36 to 0-21 to Limerick at Semple Stadium.

Tipp had credit in the bank to write it off as a bad night, or being in the middle of a heavy training block, but in hindsight in showed the distance there was between the sides in terms of where they were in preparation and the gap was largely the same come championship. A lot was made of making Thurles a harder place for visiting teams but coming off an unbeaten campaign there in 2025, Tipp only recorded one win at home this year.

The comeback win over Waterford showed their champions mentality while the final round draw with Kilkenny had a challenge match feel to it and as things worked out in the championship for both teams, was a clash of two teams lacking a killer instinct.

Second Year Syndrome

Liam Cahill couldn’t have dreamed the impact the infusion of new blood in Darragh McCarthy, Sam O’Farrell, Robert Doyle, and Oisin O’Donoghue as a super-sub, had on the team in 2025.

With success on top of that, it was always going to be difficult to replicate. Robert Doyle was one of the few Tipp players to come out of this championship with his reputation intact, despite injury hampering much of his league campaign.

This year was also the first where Darragh McCarthy and Sam O’Farrell also had to deal with third-level hurling commitments, and they certainly lacked much of the zip they brought last year. Indeed, while McCarthy has the greater profile, O’Farrell’s value to the team was shown in the first half of the Waterford game but Tipp struggled when he wasn’t to the fore.

Oisin O’Donoghue was one of the few players to kick on from last year, rising from an impact sub to starter but more of last years fringe players didn’t put enough pressure on 2025 starters.

Only Stefan Tobin, and to a lesser extent Keith Ryan brought the fresh face impact that was needed but it wasn’t nearly enough.

Still, it has to be remembered that 17 of the Tipperary panel were only in their second full year which is a large number of players still looking to make their way.

The numbers don’t lie

In 2025, if you exclude the preliminary quarter final win over Laois, Tipp scored an average of 2-25 per game but in 2026 that dropped to 1-22, a major reduction as in the modern game, anything under thirty points total won’t win many matches.

On the concession side, Tipp conceded on average 2-22 per game in their All-Ireland winning campaign but that rose to 2-27 in the four games this year so conceding on average five points more and scoring six points less, an eleven point shift is massive and manifested in the manner of the defeats to Cork, Clare and Limerick.

You cannot score without shooting and, again excluding the Laois game, Tipperary averaged 41 shots at goal per game but that number dropped to 34 this year, again confirming felt with the naked eye that Tipp didn’t get their hands on the ball enough and the forwards didn’t have quality ball to work off in the right areas. If you don’t shoot, you can’t score!

The biggest change in the two years was in terms of the scoring chances conceded with Tipp conceding on average 14 shots more per championship game in 2026, rising from 48 from 34, an indication that their work-rate had dropped off massively in terms of pressurising opponents.

In the seven championship games against Liam MacCarthy calibre teams in 2025, Tipperary never lost the turnover battle, winning it six times and tying with Kilkenny in the All-Ireland semi-final in the other. They actually beat Limerick on that metric, plus in the round-robin loss to Cork when reduced to fourteen men from the start, Tipp forced seven more turnovers than Cork, and also had one fewer shot in the game, highlighting how they battled against the odds.

This year, unsurprisingly, Tipperary were second best in the turnover battle in all four games, backing up the chances created stat that if the opponent has more of the ball, they create more of the scoring chances.

The only statistic that improved this year was Tipperary’s shooting accuracy, converting 71% of their chances, up from 65% last year, which spared the scale of the results from being even worse, also indicating Tipp are more that potent when they get enough of the ball in the right areas.

learning lessons

Tipperary’s struggles this year are likely a combination of both physical and mental.

In terms of the former, they were not as powerfully athletic, particularly noticeable in how comfortable they were able to work the ball through the lines in 2025, however, this year they seemed to veer away from it and go too direct to the forwards who were then unable to create enough separation, particularly to create goal chances which dried up compared to last year.

On the mental side of things, the players and management dug so deep last year off the disastrous 2024 campaign that the hunger had evaporated. The pressure of trying to go back-to-back had nothing to with it but maybe it is something that can be used the next time the opportunity presents itself; embracing the challenge and using it to fuel the fire off the back of a winning campaign.

Where Tipp are now is where they were in 2024, licking the wounds to ensure there isn’t a repeat next year. The biggest question will be whether a full rebuild will take place which might delay contending for another All-Ireland for a few years if too many experienced greats are moved on but the value of them remains within the group and maybe reduced to a bench role with the younger players getting priority from the start. It will be interesting to see which course the management choose to go when they begin putting their 2027 panel together in the coming months.