Tipperary withstand Galway’s comeback to get off the mark

Tipp set the world to rights yesterday but the world of February hurling is too flimsy to pay much heed to. Both sides laboured at times, both sides produced fleeting passages of beautiful play and the players gave it their all. An afternoon gale rattled over the rooftops of Thurles. The sane stayed indoors. Galway might have been blown out. They might have won.

“A really honest game between two committed teams,” said Eamon O’Shea later. “It could have gone either way. I’m glad we held out.”

A goal seconds after half time by John O’Dwyer – while the Galway men were still mentally, at least, in the warmth of the dressing room – seemed to set the home team on their way.

Séamus Callanan used both his size and guile to steal another in the 46th minute, leaving Galway 2-15 to 0-13 in arrears. To make matters worse, their forward line couldn’t buy a score for the first 15 minutes after the break.

Brave souls

And yet just when the home crowd – 4,176 brave souls turned out on a baleful and cold spring day – were settling in for a bit of a show promised by a outrageous stick-pass by Callanan for young John McGrath, Galway rallied. They harnessed the breeze and outgunned Tipp by 0-8 to 0-1 from the 50th to the 67th minute. Then Brendan Maher broke the spell and clipped a hugely relieving point for Tipp.

“You would be tired,” agreed Eamon O’Shea when it was put to him that his charges seemed to flag during that closing quarter.

“You are trying to hold out. They’re only human. They’re working hard against the wind. We were working hard to protect the lead. Just the way matches go. I wouldn’t read too much into it.”

For both managers, in fact, the afternoon seemed to illuminate the dubious delights of league hurling. Galway probably performed better here but were punished by two from-nothing goals and left without a win.

For O’Shea, league wins are beneficial in terms of rewarding midweek effort.

“I’m not too worked up about them but you like your league games to reflect something you think you’re doing right. I think we’re doing things okay. When it doesn’t reflect it, you get down. So from that point of view, that’s what bothers you rather than the result because those games could go either way. With all due respect, there’s nothing between the six teams. You work hard and you don’t have fluidity in your play.”

From the beginning it was clear that, whatever else O’Shea expected, an entirely new collective attitude was evident as Tipperary attacked the Galway clearances during a sustained opening ten minutes of pressure.

They opened up a 0-4 to 0-1 lead, the pick of the scores from Denis Maher, who showed for Kieran Bergin’s sideline cut, sidestepped Iarla Tannion and fired accurately.

A heavy chop on Maher drew a vexed reaction from O’Shea, a rare sight even in summer and the foul was punished by Séamus Callanan’s free.

O’Shea gave the latest of the McGrath prodigies, John, his first full debut and saw the Loughmore man deliver two late first-half points during one of the periodic scoring bursts which defined the first half.

Tipp maintained that swiftly acquired lead throughout the half and as so often happens in spring, both teams could summon only temporary periods of defensive intensity.

During the lulls, the sharpshooters on both sides concocted choice scores for the small crowd. Tipp’s 24th minute score represented the best of them: Pádraic Maher wheeled back to tidy up a speculative Galway ball and lobbed a clearance to the willing Denis Maher. A crisp pass from Gearóid Ryan was slickly transferred at close range by Callanan and Jason Forde finished deftly.

End-to-end, five clean passes and a score: in their groove, Tipp are pretty to watch.

Although Galway struggled to get ball to their inside line for too much of the first half, they stayed in touch through fine points by Cathal Mannion and James Regan and a sublime cut by Jason Flynn. This was a true contest – intense and filled with keen, meaty exchanges from the beginning – which is why the relative ease of the two Tipp goals were so galling for Anthony Cunningham to observe.

The response

“They shouldn’t have happened,” he said simply.

But the response was heartening. Against general expectations, the match grew into a totally absorbing occasion, with David Collins and Iarla Tannion leading a storming period of dominance by a Galway defence and Joseph Cooney, pushed into full forward, declaring that a raid was possible with two outstanding points.

His second left just a goal between the sides and the sounds rattling around Semple stadium were of local anxiety now.

Pádraic Maher was an immense, calming influence for Tipp’s under-fire defence through that tempestuous phase. Galway had chances and must have thought about those seven second-half wides as they motored towards Portumna and the border.

As it was, even after Brendan Maher broke the siege, Andy Smyth met a brilliantly timed and thumping shoulder by Paul Curran to flick a point to leave the Tribesmen with the possibility of an injury time draw.

Cooney, under the hood of the Ryan stand, sent in a devilish ball, head height but Darren Gleeson – who had made two smart saves over the afternoon – collected safely.

Two league points, then, for Tipp but O’Shea offered a closing observation on where things are at.

“We’ll see. We’ll have to wait until the ball speeds up a bit to see. Make no judgments until the ball speeds up. Then make all the judgments you want,” he concluded.