Tipp fail to fire as they miss out on All Ireland date
Kilkenny 1-15
Tipperary 2-10
Knockout hurling hit hard for this Tipperary minor hurling team last Sunday.
In their previous five games this summer, there was always the guarantee of the next game if things didn’t work out but unfortunately following this defeat, their hopes of an All Ireland title evaporated.
What has been an amazing experience for this group of players through the summer, playing in front of big crowds as curtain-raisers to senior games, nothing prepares a sixteen or seventeen year old for Croke Park and that’s how it proved, for both sides.
Kilkenny can rightly claim they didn’t hit the heights of how they can play either but they did enough to book their place in the All Ireland final and should have been more comfortable than the two point margin.
That is what will hurt Tipperary the most is that despite playing nowhere near their best compared to what we saw earlier this summer, it wouldn’t have taken much more to get them over the line and into the August 19th showpiece.
Unlike the defeats to Limerick and Waterford in the round-robin phase when they had the opportunity to right the wrongs, Tipp won’t get the opportunity to right the wrongs of a disappointing performance where they never really got going.
To their credit when the game looked to be slipping away in the second half, they dug deep and managed to conjure up two goals to take Kilkenny right to the final whistle but alas it wasn’t to be.
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