In a quiet moment in the Tipperary dressingroom after the 2016 All-Ireland final, Michael Ryan reset the clock at zero. The Tipp manager pointed at the Liam MacCarthy Cup and said if anyone in the room was content with winning it once, they should leave now. Ryan knew the lie of the land. From the top of the mountain Tipp had a history of hazardous descents.
Over the following months Ryan tried to micromanage Tipp’s response to being champions. They declined an invitation to appear on the Late Late Show and all public appearances by players with the cup were ruled out after December. One-on-one interviews with players were not permitted either, apart from occasional sponsors’ events.
“The Tipp players are living like hermits,” said one former Tipp player that winter. “It’s like they never won it. It’s unbelievable. There’s not a word about anything. No rumours. No nothing. Only that Mick Ryan has frightened the life out of the whole place.”
Tipp stormed to the 2017 league final and, out of nowhere, lost to Galway by 16 points. All of a sudden, the reins had slipped. A couple of weeks later two players were carpeted for their behaviour on the May Bank Holiday weekend and forced to apologise to the group.
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Three weeks after that, Cork beat them in the first round of the Munster championship in Thurles. By the end of the month Cathal Barrett had been cut from the panel “for disciplinary reasons.” Tipp’s title defence was under siege from inside and out.
They made a restorative run through the qualifiers and, ultimately, lost an earthquaking All-Ireland semi-final to Galway by a point. But it wasn’t their goal to lose honourably. Another title defence had come up short.
For the last 60 years, Tipp have been in this tangle with history. Liam Cahill’s champions are the ninth to launch a title defence since the county last went back-to-back in 1964/65. The latter was the year My Fair Lady swept the Oscars, a Russian astronaut became the first man to walk in space, and the Latin Mass was dropped. Maybe it was before your time.
Since then, Kilkenny have successfully defended an All-Ireland title eight times, mostly with their greatest team, but also with a couple of teams that had no claim on such a rank. Limerick and Cork have done it three times too. Only one of Tipp’s title defences, though, ended in reaching the All-Ireland final. Most of the time, they haven’t come close.
Even though each failure had a discrete set of circumstances, they have been bundled together in a damning pattern. That is a nonsense too. The Tipp team that failed to defend the All-Ireland in 1966, for example, had already mounted successful defences in 1962 and 1965.
Early in 1966, they were rattled by the death of their manager Paddy Leahy, but by then they had won five All-Irelands since 1958 and the pillar players in the group had drifted into their mid-30s. “It was unreasonable to think it could continue,” says Babs Keating, a young player on that team.
There was always something. Tommy Dunne has been part of three title defences, one as a player and two as a coach. All of them were hit by a different weather system. When they won the All-Ireland in 2001, with Dunne as captain, it was their first title in 10 years, the second longest hiatus in their history. That year they had been unbeaten in 17 matches: championship, league, tournaments, challenge games.
“At the start of 2001, we knew that it was nearly do-or-die,” says Dunne. “There was an awful lot at stake for the group. There was a natural, unchallenged, undiminished desire and drive there at the start of 2001. But, straight away, when you win, it takes a little percentage off that burning hunger. All of a sudden that famine [10 years], for want of a better word, is gone.
“So then in 2002, that changed, because you were on the circuit [with the cup]. You were fulfilling the needs of a county that wanted to celebrate it, and we wanted to celebrate it. We went on holidays, we were partying. We understood that we were never likely to go unbeaten in 2002, but we were saying, like, ‘We’ll be fine when the time comes.’”
At the end of 2001, Declan Ryan retired after 14 seasons, and the team lost more than its head of state. “He was a compass in the group, a real guidance,” says Dunne. Aside from Ryan, though, the average age of the team that started the 2001 All-Ireland final was just 23. Unlike in 1966, time was on their side.
“I do remember in the dressingroom after the All-Ireland in ’01, what was on my mind was, ‘Jesus, I’d love to win it again.’ It would mark out the team as special. I remember that going through my mind.
“So, there was definitely that part in it for us [in 2002], but it was never a hugely driving factor. It wasn’t like we completely underperformed or completely fell away – we didn’t. The All-Ireland semi-final [against Kilkenny] is a game Tipp could have won. It wasn’t a game where there was a fatigue or a tiredness or a hangover from the year before. I don’t remember it being like that.”
The Tipp team that won All-Irelands in 1989 and 1991 had other stuff to deal with. When they won their breakthrough All-Ireland it was Tipp’s first title in 16 years and nobody had a grip on the euphoria, or the vapour of champagne spray.
“It wouldn’t have even been discussed [winning back-to-back All-Irelands],” says Colm Bonnar, who played in those years. “We were so long waiting for that first All-Ireland, people were just so overjoyed at everything and that did take its toll. There was no pressure on back-to-back, there was nothing like that ever mentioned.
“But in 1990, we were going for our fourth Munster final in a row and that had never been done in Tipperary before, not even the great ’60s team did that. That was a huge motivation. We probably underestimated Cork that little bit [in the Munster final]. But they went on and won the All-Ireland. It wasn’t like we were way off the mark or fell asunder.”
Since the mid-60s, only the 2011 Tipp team have won the Munster title while trying to defend their All-Ireland. That year they won their three games in Munster by a pulverising average of 13 points, scoring 14 goals along the way.
But that year didn’t have a linear narrative either. Liam Sheedy and his management team stepped away after the 2010 All-Ireland and for Declan Ryan and Dunne and their crew coming in, that was a massive void to fill.
“That was a really seismic period for that group of players, no doubt about that,” says Dunne. “Lots of the lads have said how they were shocked and disappointed and dismayed that the lads stepped away. We were very much aware going in that this was going to be very difficult for the players because of the relationship and the trust and what they’d achieved with Liam [Sheedy] and Mick [Ryan] and Eamon [O’Shea]. We were under no illusions that this was not an ideal situation.”
But there were no signs of a drop-off in performance until the All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin and the weeks that followed. On the weekend before the final they had a training camp in Fota where they played a full-scale match among themselves, just as they had done before the previous year’s All-Ireland. The same intercounty referee had handled both games and he was struck by the difference in intensity from one year to the next.
“I remember being concerned after that match,” says Dunne. “I remember that feeling very well. It didn’t go to the way you would expect for a team of our stature that was trying to do something special. I remember being worried. The form we had in Munster that year was nearly impossible to maintain, but it was a major disappointment [the All-Ireland final defeat to Kilkenny]. The players were there, the structures were there – a lot of things, on the face of it, were in a really good position.”
But just like in 2001, and to a much greater extent 1989, Tipp had closed a significant gap in 2010. For Tipp, nine years without an All-Ireland was a long time. Upending the Kilkenny team that was attempting to win five-in-a-row was bound to carry a tax too. The settlement was delayed, but not for long.
“Were fellas doing all the gym sessions in 2011? I’m not sure they were,” said Brendan Cummins, years later. “I don’t think we had the same 110 per cent commitment and ferocity and frenzy to win the All-Ireland that was there in 2010.
“In 2002 [when Cummins was also on the team] and in 2011, we could have cultivated a competitive environment within the squad better than we did. It got a bit cosy, and when it gets cosy, you’re goosed. Everybody needs to feel that their place is under threat. After the Munster final [in 2011] that was eroded. The competitive edge was lost.”
In 2020, nothing was comparable to Tipp’s other title defences. The world had tilted on its axis. Just before the first Covid lockdown, Tipp had a training camp in Spain. A year earlier it had been the trampoline for their All-Ireland winning season.
Sheedy was manager again and Dunne was part of the management team. Were they thinking about back-to-back? Without question. To each other, it was an explicit goal.
“The camp the year before catapulted us into the championship,” says Dunne. “But the camp we had in 2020 was better than the camp we had in 2019. That’s the truth. It was off the scale in terms of intensity and engagement and the focus we had. It was phenomenal. But everything was messed up by Covid. That’s not the only reason why we didn’t win the All-Ireland, that’s only a context.”
Limerick beat them in the Munster semi-final. In their eight failed title defences over the last 60 years, they have been beaten five times by the team that ultimately won the All-Ireland: 1990, 2002, 2011, 2017, 2020. In 2020, Limerick won the title, hands down. Tipp weren’t as good as that.
“I agree with you, but that’s not the point from a Tipp perspective,” says Dunne. “The standards in Tipp are you expect to win it, no matter who else is in it, no matter how good they are. That’s the way it is. Yeah, Limerick are a great team, possibly one of the greatest ever, but we still expect to beat them. That’s the way we’re wired.”
This weekend, their title defence hangs in the balance. In Tipp, there are no excuses.
