Mixture of disappointment and pride for Heffernan

By Joe Scully

For Tipperary manager James Heffernan it was a case of pride but massive disappointment following another All-Ireland semi-final defeat for the Premier County on Saturday evening and wondering what might have been.

“We are gutted,” he said in the immediate aftermath of the five point defeat.

“I’m proud of how we fought in the second half, how we got ourselves back into the game.

“I thought with about fifteen minutes to play we were in with a chance, but unfortunately we just couldn’t kick on, but you have to give credit to Cork also for that.”

He added: “This is the game to win, at home against Cork, with a brilliant crowd, we had fantastic support especially in the second half so just majorly disappointed at the result.”

For Heffernan, he felt the game was won in the period of a few minutes during the first half when Cork scored their second goal and then added two quick points.

“We started well, and even after fifteen-twenty minutes it was 1-5 to 0-4, and we were well in it,” he said as Cork had the aid of the breeze.

“We needed to stay within that kind of distance at half time, but they just had a spell where they got the second goal and a couple of points, and then it’s always going to be an uphill battle going in nine points down at half-time.

“Another team would have just lied down but to our credit we didn’t so proud of the girls for that.”

A key momen came in the 38th minute when a Grace O’Brien shot was heading for the top corner only for Cork keeper Amy Lee to pull off a sensational save to turn it out for a 45. A goal at that stage would have had Tipp right back in the game,.

“It was an unreal save, we have to give Amy massive credit,” Heffernan said.

“We had been kind of encouraging the girls to shoot low, but Grace put it right into the top corner so you can’t really do much more than that. That would have brought us back into it at the time, but that was probably our only realistic goal chance and we needed to be creating more goal chances really.”

The first year manager was reluctant to talk too much about the future as the most important part was the girls and the disappointment they would be feeling.

“You are learning the whole time, it’s very hard to know right at this moment, but we definitely learned a lot about our players, and of course the panel will evolve over the next couple of years as it naturally does,” he added.

“At the moment though you’re not really thinking ahead to next year, more about the disappointment on our end and more on the disappointment the girls will be feeling after today, and that’s my main thought at the moment.”