Tipperary’s All-Ireland win was ‘good for hurling,’ says Callanan

Seamus Callanan believes that Tipperary’s All-Ireland final win was “good for hurling”.

Tipp romped to victory over Kilkenny at Croke Park last month with Callanan producing one of the all-time great final performances, registering nine of his 13 points from play.

While Callanan believes Kilkenny remain the benchmark, he reckons the win can only inspire other contenders.

He does, however, challenge Tipp to emulate Kilkenny by going on to claim more All-Irelands in the coming years. “There’s more to achieve,” he said. “It will be a massive challenge again next year because everybody will feel they have a chance.

“Someone different winning was good for hurling too but Kilkenny will be back with an extra chip on their shoulder. They’ll probably be the benchmark again.”

All of Tipperary’s 15 final starters have been nominated for GAA/GPA All Star awards and the Drom and Inch hitman is in the mix for the individual player of the year award, alongside county-mate Pádraic Maher and Waterford’s Austin Gleeson. “It’s brilliant to be mentioned among players like that, to be at that level again.

Massive part

“Everyone had a massive part to play and it’s great on All-Ireland final day that everybody can go home and say, look, we all played well and we were happy as a team but personally we could be happy.

“That reflected in the nominations, so it’s brilliant.

“It’s easy to say there were 34 lads involved but, genuinely, there were and they put the shoulder to the wheel. Without every one of them, it just wouldn’t have been possible.

“The lads that weren’t on the 26 will be pushing to get into it. That’s the healthy competition you need for next year.”

Callanan said that Tipp’s pre-final form was so good that he was pretty much restricted during training matches.

“There was two weeks before the All-Ireland final and I’d say I hadn’t pucked a ball in training, the lads were very hungry for it and they were making you earn everything.

“It was very difficult there, we were marking top-class players in training every day which let us perform on the big day, and had us ready for it.”

Callanan’s return to club fare ended in disappointment as county finalists Kildangan sent them crashing out at the quarter-final stage.

But Callanan doesn’t plan to be idle too long. “After a week or two of doing nothing, you want to get back on track again and every intercounty player is probably the same – tip away over the winter and don’t let our fitness drop too much.

“You don’t want to do too much either because you want to keep your hunger. But it’s important to keep the body ticking over and don’t let yourself go back a bit.”

Challenge

And Callanan accepts that the hunters are now the hunted as the pretenders to Tipp’s throne line up next year to take them down. “It’s a massive challenge but that’s sport. You enjoy the challenges and if they weren’t there, you probably wouldn’t even play the game.

“It’s brilliant to have those challenges there and we have a challenge now to try and put a few [titles] together.”

Seamus Callanan was speaking at Centra’s ‘Live Well’ hurling initiative at Croke Park.