Tipperary Manager Liam Sheedy watching his charges at the Gaelic Grounds. Photograph: Bridget Delaney

Sheedy looks to take lessons from Clare defeat

While admitting his disappointment at the overall performance, there was a sense that Tipperary manager Liam Sheedy wasn't going to lose too much sleep following Sunday's Munster Hurling League final defeat to Clare.

He had no complaints with the result admitting that Clare had too much pace on the day, despite Tipperary getting off to a decent start.

In the first half leading five point to one I thought we were going okay. I felt the referee should have blown the whistle for the restart (in the lead up to the first Clare goal) as I thought it was too quick and ended up in the back of the net, 0-5 to 1-1 and Clare got a handle on us from there.

Look, you are going to struggle to win any match when you concede four goals and to be fair to Clare, any time they got the ball in, it looked like there was danger in there so we just struggled to contain them today.

From my perspective it is a great workout to get in the middle of January. We could be training for three weeks and wouldn't get a match like that so you want to get a sense of where you are in the middle of January and clearly we are that little bit behind.

I thought they had the most hunger, they had the most pace when they started to come at us we struggled to deal with them and their running game really did hurt us. Tony (Kelly) was playing the deep role and then coming back up and finding space for himself and we struggled to deal with that.

Clare are absolutely deserving winners and are a long way down the road. You seen it last year they were only a puck of a ball from getting into an All Ireland Final and that is where the bar is and we know where we are in January.”

 

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