It was all going extremely well for Tipperary early in 2017. All-Ireland champions the previous summer, their defeat by Cork in the last divisional fixture was the team’s first defeat in a year. Without saying as much, they looked nicely on target for the county’s great white whale, back-to-back Liam MacCarthys.
It was the first time the county had even reached a league final as All-Ireland champions since 1965, coincidentally still the last year in which they retained the All-Ireland.
Perceived as distant front-runners, Tipp trailed by six at half-time and in the second half were all but spectators, as Galway fattened the margin of victory by a further 10 points.
Michael Ryan, then manager, remembers it well. At the time he said it had been “the flattest performance we’ve ever produced”.
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Nine years later, he is asked did it indeed derail their championship in just one afternoon?
“Do you know what? I think it did. Not as in holed-below-the-waterline, but it certainly had a big impact,” Ryan says.
“There are games you might lose and how you lose them is important, but that one was a trimming. We had no answers for Galway in Limerick that day. Now, as far as I’m concerned, you should always be trying to get yourself to the end of any competition. But the jeopardy is that you’re not supposed to take a beating.”
The teams had at that stage played out two titanic All-Ireland semi-final contests in the previous two years, and would again later that summer, but Tipperary’s gloss as the leading team in the country had been badly scuffed.
“You’ve also given energy to the opposition by saying, hang on a sec, look what Galway did to these guys – notwithstanding that Galway were an excellent side, about to win that year’s All-Ireland. Given our history with them, it was almost like a false game.”
It had its impact all the same. A month later, Cork had deposed them as Munster champions.
Retaliation in kind
On Saturday evening, Tipperary open their season in possession of the All-Ireland for the eighth time since 1965. That 2017 final remains the furthest they have travelled in the league as champions in 61 years.
It’s not that the competition hasn’t been influential for the county. Coincidentally, last year they reached the league final, but were mauled by an ascendant Cork. Within four months, they had retaliated in kind.
At the Páirc Uí Chaoimh press conference after the league final, manager Liam Cahill undertook to learn from the experience and apply the lessons when they returned to the venue in the championship. We all nodded, but it sounded like whistling past the graveyard.
Ryan recalls being philosophical about it, saying: “I was in the stand thinking it’s brilliant to be in this league final, but you just looked at the opposition and said, ‘Oh God, Cork are 20, 30 per cent further on than we are’.”
Eamonn Corcoran played on the 2001 team that captured Tipp’s last league-championship double. He says that last year’s campaign, including the final, had a major, immediate and identifiable impact.
Two weeks later, the team played a barnstorming draw with their old tormentors, Limerick, and the epiphany of the reborn John McGrath went on exhibit.
“I think they did a huge analysis after the Cork game on the style of play and their aggression levels, because their aggression levels just went to a different level altogether in a positive way against Limerick,” Corcoran says.
Ironically the match they had been so apprehensive about, the Munster championship group match back in Cork, ended up in a free pass because of excessive aggression, leading to Darragh McCarthy’s red card before throw-in.
For Corcoran, the stylistic tweaks were as important.
“I think it was a sense that we became much tighter in the backline in particular. We weren’t opened up through the middle, whether it was Ronan [Maher] sitting back a bit more, protecting the full-back line. It felt in the league final there was gaps right through the middle.
“The ball was getting faster into the full-forward line. It just felt that day against Cork we were trying to work the ball out through the lines and we weren’t at the pitch of it. When Cork ran at us, we looked exposed.
“The midfielders were sitting a bit deeper as the championship went on. I think they protected the full-back line in particular because that day they were really exposed. We’re very fortunate with a centre back like Ronan Maher, who can really protect a full-back line and can play anywhere around the field.”
He also saw something of his old team-mate’s personal influence.
“It just seemed in the match against Limerick ... we went for every ball as if our lives depended on it; it was real. I hurled with Liam and he often talks about the Tipperary style of hurling and the honesty of the players and resilience. I felt last year he really got the players and the supporters in behind him.”
‘It’s a big league for Tipperary’
Eoin Kelly captained the last Tipperary team to win the league, in 2008. They didn’t win an All-Ireland immediately, but reached the final in the following two years with Kelly eventually lifting Liam MacCarthy in 2010. It was, however, the start.
“It was the journey that we went on, but I’m going to say that any Tipperary player that was in the dressingroom – and I know; I was 15 years in it – we always went to win the league every year. Now, it hasn’t happened since 2008, but it was not for the lack of trying,” he says.
“I suppose the next thing when you look at the league is you say, ‘Right, what players have I found? Have I put a team together?’ Because you do want to be coming out of your league with nearly 13 or 14 of your championship team, and I think Tipperary came out of the league final last year with that.”
He recalls the growing confidence levels of 2008, identifying the league milestones.
“Real pre-season hard work had been put in, and then we won the Waterford Crystal that year. We won the National Hurling League. We went on to win the Munster championship and ultimately fell down in the All-Ireland semi-finals, but it definitely gave us a psychological edge.”
Along the road to the league, they defeated Kilkenny.
“It was the league semi-final in Nowlan Park. They were ‘the’ team at the time and we were gathered around that day and I said, ‘Look, we beat them in their home patch. We move on to a league final. Let’s go for this’.
“Earlier that campaign, we drew with Galway in the league in Salthill. I think it finished 16 points each. I had to put over a long-range free through the wind there to draw and we had a man sent off, Ryan O’Dwyer.
“The character that we showed that day was probably another of the building blocks. Liam Sheedy referenced it a couple of times afterwards.”
Having used last year’s league to fashion an All-Ireland, Cahill has brought 13 newcomers on to his panel, combining the players who have won at both minor and under-20 but also recognising club form.
“It’s a big league for Tipperary,” Kelly says, “and I think the aim will be to blood two or three more new players to challenge for places and that’s probably where the excitement is coming from.
“If they win the league, or if they don’t win the league, is it the be-all-and-end-all? No, but I’m sure when Tipperary haven’t won the league since 2008, Liam would love to fix that.”
