Tipperary savour second bite

Tipperary are riding the rails this summer. Leaning into the curves, wind on their faces, taking whatever life brings them. On the first Sunday in July, in a hospice of a dressing-room in Pairc Ui Chaoimh, they'd not have cared if you'd told them they'd never see the sun again. They'd just been ambushed by a team who'd been lying in wait for four years. They lost by just the width of a goal, but came away knowing that they'd been hurled off the pitch. They met the Tuesday night in Cashel. It felt weird. Twilight zone stuff. Back together in the days after a championship defeat. Not sure if any good could come of it. Not sure if they liked it.

Yesterday, in Croke Park, they liked it well enough. Hurling's new format with all its inconsistencies and frailties had served up another compulsive afternoon. Tipperary were back in the limelight. Yes. They liked it well enough.

John Leahy, his left eye swollen to the size of a sliotar, walked around the dressing-room wordlessly hugging his team-mates. Len Gaynor grinned quietly. Conal Bonner spoke of all the things which Tipp needed to prove to themselves yesterday. There was no whooping, just the quiet, confident sense of earnestness which is the eeriest part of winning teams.

Ten yards down the corridor Wexford sat and wondered when exactly all the good times had drained away. So many things which were supposed to happen yesterday just never happened. Tom Dempsey got barely a sniff around the goal. Rory McCarthy left the field looking like a man who'd run into the path of some careless buffalo. Rod Guiney hit the deck after a couple of minutes and his replacement, John O'Connor, was still sampling the air when John Leahy nipped in for a goal.

The loss of Guiney proved critical for Wexford. O'Connor seldom looked comfortable on a zestful Leahy. The decision to move Sean Flood across came too late. Leahy ended up with 1-3 from play to his name. The reputation he had in the early nineties was returning last night.

Poor Wexford. It wasn't so much that nobody told them there would be days like this. Just that nobody told them there would be days like this again. So soon.

This was the Riverdance of sport after all. Wexford's re-emergence had been the high point of the great hurling revival. Now to be beaten by the standard-bearers of the ancien regime? In the end they brought Billy Byrne on. The bedlam which marked the first sighting of old Billy suggested he might have done his warm-up routine on the surface of the adjacent canal. Billy got hardly a touch. Martin Storey, who had been beating Noel Sheehy ends up, faded into invisibility. You can't have fairytales everyday. Or maybe you can. Liam Sheedy stood in the centre of the dressing-room and wired himself into the soul of the game yesterday evening. Liam first wore a Tipp senior jersey in a league game against Dublin in the quiet aftermath of the county's All-Ireland win in 1989. He had to wait until an afternoon in Clones three weeks ago to make his senior championship debut. Liam Sheedy's train has been a long time coming.

"I come from Portroe, a small parish of 800 people and surely 400 of them were out there today. It's unexplainable what that means to us. You can't explain it. All week our names have been painted on the street and there has been bunting up. It means so much to us. You couldn't imagine it. Days like this, you dream about them. It all starts again tomorrow, getting ready for one hell of a battle against the Banner boys."

Yes, the Banner Boys. They were on every Tipp player's thoughts yesterday. Clare. Omnipotent. All powerful. Masters of the universe. "They were awesome against Cork and Kerry," said Conal Bonner, "awesome against us, awesome against Kilkenny. They've got to be red-hot favourites."

"Aw, Clare," said Michael Cleary, "we'd have to really improve on that to beat Clare. They're the form team in the country. Nobody would doubt that."

"It'll be tough to beat Clare," said Len Gaynor, "but at least we have another crack." Before a chuffed Clare team scrap their training schedule and book the open-top bus, they will probably want to watch a video of yesterday's proceedings which revealed a Tipperary side much changed in attitude and shape from that which lost in Munster.

"Losing the Munster final," said Sheedy, "it might have been bad for Tipperary, but for a few of us it gave us the chance to work our way into the team."

"What have we worked on since the Munster final?" said Conal Bonnar grinning. "Getting me into the team mainly."

In a modest way, Bonnar and Sheedy had hit upon a major truth. Tipperary's half-back line struggled to impose themselves against Clare in July. Yesterday they ground Wexford into submission. Colm Bonnar started tentatively, but grew in influence as the minutes passed. Conal Bonnar hurled a fine game but what impressed was the quality and ferocity of his physical input. Bonnar was running through walls in the first half yesterday. Sheedy enjoyed a good 70 minutes, too. Tipp are much sturdier and more aggressive around the middle of the park than they were six weeks ago. Bodies crashed off each other like dodgems yesterday, and in the chaos, surprisingly, it was Tipperary who were able to locate and adhere to the game plan.

Conal Bonner felt that the lost Munster final and Tipp's two woundingly lacklustre performances in the interim had contributed much to yesterday's passion play.

"We were written off before the game. Right, too, probably. Even some of our own had written us off. We had to go out there and do it for ourselves. For our own self-belief and the management's self-belief."

Tipperary seem to have sold the idea of the back door route to glory to themselves. In the downcast weeks after the Munster final, it seemed as if their negativity towards the concept might capsize them. This morning there is some bitter irony in the fact that Nicky Brennan, the format's great evangelist, finds his Kilkenny team redundant while Len Gaynor, the great sceptic, is planning for an All-Ireland.

Gaynor was quiet and happy yesterday. The world isn't perfect, but it's not a bad place to be either. His thoughts came in snappy little telegrams from his brain to his mouth.

"Aye, another crack at Clare now. Nothing more to say. Here we go. I can't ask for more than that. We played a consistent game today. We started well, we kept it up, Wexford made a fair bid to come back at us, but we never seemed to lose our shape. The commitment was huge. Everything is important. Goals? Whenever you get them. You have to score goals to win. Doubts lingered. Always doubts lingering until you hurl them out of your system. They did that today."

Last words to Michael Cleary, whose startling blossoming in the final quarter secured the game for Tipperary. Just about. He'd seen Liam Cahill coming in from the bench and assumed he was being substituted.

"I stayed on and then it just fell loose in the last quarter. It's great to be back in the All-Ireland. I was beginning to doubt if we'd ever get back. Back door or front door, I suppose when you're there, you are there."

Perhaps it will be labelled a back door All-Ireland if Tipperary win. For the time being, though, they are just riding the rails, humming their tune. What will be, will be.