'We are far from finished'

Tipperary wing-back Conal Bonnar was in a controlled, jubilant mood. "We won't worry about Clare in the final. We will worry about ourselves. They said that we had our day and that the defeat in the Munster final was the end of the road for this team. We showed today that we are far from finished. "Every team in any sport will have a bad day. Clare are an amazing team and they can really surprise everybody. We put a great emphasis on team-work and that is what won today. We believed that we could make the most of our second chance. Some of our own supporters didn't believe that but we worked very hard together and we put the Munster final behind us and this was the result. "You can't write off a team like Tipperary like some people did. We were determined that all the hard work would pay dividends and, in the end, it did. Now we are in the final and nobody can take that away from us. We will start thinking about Clare tomorrow. At the moment we are just happy to have won a tough, demanding match today against the reigning All Ireland champions," he said. The appearance of Aidan Ryan in the second half for Tipperary brought a huge cheer from the vast crowd. Always a favourite with the Tipperary fans, his blond hair gives him as distinctive appearance which attracts all-comers. A casual question: "Well Aidan! A new lease of life?" brings a grin. "Who? Me or Tipperary?"

Like all of his comrades he is rejoicing in the advance to the All-Ireland final against their Munster final conquerors, Clare. "We have a lot more hurling to do. First we have Galway in the National League semi-final before we even think about the All Ireland." When it is suggested that the National League is now a secondary concern he rejects the idea. "Nobody wants to lose a match of that importance. If you lose matches you get into a losing frame of mind. After today we are winners and I believe that it is important for us to keep on winning. Losing can become a bad habit," he says. He admits that morale was low after the Munster final defeat. "This has given us a great boost and I believe that we will make the most of it," he says. Bonnar admits that the victory has given him a lot of satisfaction. "We felt down after the Munster final. Now we are back up again. We didn't have any particular plan insofar as the match was concerned. We just got stuck in to some very hard training because we knew that Clare were very fit and were working very hard. "We had to take our chance and even if we were lucky in a way to get the goals when we did it was important for us to close Wexford down. We did that well, our fullback line in particular. We got goals and Wexford didn't and, in the long run, that was what made the difference between the teams," he said.

Bonnar denied that the late appearance of Billy Byrne sent tremors through the Tipperary defence. "At that stage Wexford needed miracles and not even Billy Byrne could deliver those. We knew very well that he was a dangerous man if he got the ball but he didn't get a chance because we were winning the ball in the middle of the field all the time and the ball wasn't getting in to our goal-mouth so he wasn't a real worry for us," said Bonnar.

Serious or not, Len Gaynor, the Tipperary manager, was being cautious. "We have no illusions about ourselves at the moment. With the defeat of Wexford, Clare are the best team in the country at the moment and it will take a massive effort from us to beat them.

"As things stand at the moment there is no way we can make up the difference in fitness between us. They have done an enormous amount of training and are super fit. That means that we will have to out-hurl them and close down their forwards. We won't be able to catch up at this stage as far as fitness is concerned.

"I am confident that we can beat them. We know quite a lot about them at this stage. We will have to identify their weaknesses and then exploit them if we can. It isn't going to be easy but we can do it," he said.