A poor game in plain English

Nicholas English may have been happy to have avoided a further meeting with Waterford in advance of their championship date in four weeks but he wasn't exactly cock-a-hoop at beating Limerick and having reached a second successive league final.

"It was a poor game to be honest. The crowd never really got involved. The players did enough to win but we were unimpressive enough.

"My feelings on the final are known. I feel the league suffers by this timing. It's a worthwhile competition but it's being throttled by the championship. There'll be football championship matches on that weekend and I think it takes away from the final. It wouldn't be a difficult matter to organise it a little differently, maybe bring it forward a few weeks."

Although his team have a good campaign record to date with only one defeat, English felt the shadows of that one reverse had fallen on the team

"This was a home game for us and our last home game, against Kilkenny, was poor. A residue of that was there today. There was unease in front of the home crowd and with competition for places it was a bit tense and uneasy. If Limerick had taken their chances in the first half, they could have made it difficult for us."

The prospect of having to face Waterford in the league final had receded before Tipperary took the field but English said that this hadn't affected their approach to the match.

"Not really. Our preparation was at two o'clock. All the speaking was done by then. In our situation, we have very few players who are really established. In a way everybody is on trial for May 28th. Maybe we felt more on trial than Limerick."

In addition to the pre-match withdrawals of Paul Ormonde and Declan Ryan, Tipperary may have to do without centre-fielder Andy Moloney who picked up an eye injury in the second half and was taken to Ardkeen hospital in Waterford.

"It was just an accident," said his manager. "He ran into it when making a block. Any knock you pick up is hard to clear up in two weeks."

In the other dressing-room, Limerick manager Eamonn Cregan was blunt about the failings which had cost his developing team the match.

"We conceded two goals and on both occasions the ball should have been cleared. It wasn't and we were chasing the game from then onwards. The lads have got to learn. Forwards have to chase and harry and take the chances. We didn't."

He believed that Tipperary had done their homework on the team.

"They realised what sort of a full-forward line we had. The full back (Philip Maher) played in front of Brian Begley and we played into the full back's hands by putting the ball in front of Begley. We'll look at it again and analyse it."

He added: "We didn't win the dropping balls. Forwards have to win the ball and backs have to clear the ball effectively. We didn't do either. We had loads of chances to put the ball over the bar and didn't take them. We had goal chances we didn't take. Once you don't score, the team falls into a lull. And when we did score, they came back and cancelled it out."

Three of the panel - including Begley - had been celebrating success in the under-21 All-Ireland football semi-final last Wednesday and whereas Cregan was inclined to rule it out as an excuse, he accepted the preparation wasn't ideal.

"Playing football and hurling is totally different. You're changing from a slow game to a fast game in four days. It didn't work out. There were some very good individual performances but it's hard to be happy when you don't win."