You would like to think (well, I would anyway
) that Tipp will put two of these babies back-to-back for the first time in 55 years next August; but it’s a very difficult thing to do, especially now, with the Championship arguably as competitive as it’s ever been. In the last three years alone:
– Five different counties (Galway x2, Waterford, Limerick, Tipperary and Kilkenny) have contested three All-Ireland finals;
– Not only were two of the eventual winners from outside of hurling’s “big three”, they ended long-running droughts of 29 (Galway) and 45 (Limerick) years respectively;
– Eight different counties (Galway x2, Tipperary x2, Waterford, Cork x2, Limerick x2, Clare, Wexford and Kilkenny) have contested the six All-Ireland semi-finals in that period;
– Of those six semi-finals, five were decided by two points or less: Tipp/Galway in 2017 (one point), Limerick/Cork (two points, after extra-time) and Galway/Clare (one point, after a replay and extra-time the first day) in 2018, and Tipp/Wexford (two points) and Limerick/Kilkenny (one point) in 2019; go back further, to 2016, and you can add single point victories for Tipperary and Kilkenny over Galway and Waterford respectively, the latter after a replay and extra-time;
– In addition, four different counties (Cork x2, Limerick, Galway x2 and Wexford) have won the six provincial championships up for grabs from 2017–2019, with Tipperary and Kilkenny out of the picture in Munster and Leinster respectively since 2016.
Then there’s the format. Two games used to be enough to win you a Munster title some years, and sometimes you even had to play just
four to win an All-Ireland. I’m thinking about 1989 in particular, when Tipperary’s contentious semi-final against Galway was the only test they had during a summer where they outscored their opponents by an average of 11 points per game, having played only four times across three months. Nowadays, you can beat every team in Munster and still end up with no trophy to show for it, and an All-Ireland victory will oblige you to play a minimum of seven within the same timeframe.
Furthermore, you can go from being statistically the second-worst team in the province and winless one year to winning 7 out of 8 and beating everyone of consequence on your way to winning the All-Ireland the next. Tipperary did it this year, but it’s potentially true of all the Munster teams in 2020, each of whom have either reached an All-Ireland final (2017 for Waterford, 2018 for Limerick), come desperately close to doing so (extra-time defeats for Clare and Cork in 2018), or won Munster titles (2017 and 2018 for Cork, 2019 for Limerick) in the last three years.
And there’s some who’ll even tell you these days, with compelling evidence I might add, that getting humiliated in a Munster final is actually a
good thing, in so far as it highlights clear weaknesses to work on while your conquerors go off to be ambushed by Kilkenny. Just like 2010, for example, when Liam Sheedy readjusted after a Munster quarter-final hammering below in Cork in May (Aisake Ó hAilpín’s finest hour in a Cork jersey) to win the big one in September.
So Tipperary will have their work cut out next year, and that’s before you even glance at their history over the past half-century or so.
Since 1965, the other members of hurling’s “big three” (Kilkenny and Cork) have won multiple consecutive All-Irelands on nine occasions between them, including a four-in-a-row for Kilkenny between 2006–2009 and a three-in-a-row for Cork between 1976–1978. And while they haven’t claimed as many titles as their rivals over that period, there is no denying that the Tipperary teams who won senior hurling All-Irelands in 1971, 1989, 1991, 2001, 2010 and 2016 were talented enough to win more.
Yet the only one of them that really came close to doing so was the 2011 team, hanging 7-19 on Waterford in the Munster final and reaching a third consecutive All-Ireland final for the first time since 1962 under Sheedy’s successor Declan Ryan (in what turned out to be a fairly one-sided affair everywhere but the scoreboard). Otherwise, there were semi-final defeats in 2002 (by four points to Kilkenny, having already handed Waterford a first Munster final victory since 1963) and 2017 (by a point to Galway), and the reigning champions failed to get out of Munster at all in 1971, 1990 and 1992, all defeats inflicted by Cork: the first after a replay in the Gaelic Grounds in 1972, the second a surprise ambush that they blindly stumbled into down in Thurles in 1990, and the third a damp squib of a match in monsoon conditions in the Páirc in 1992.
There were many missed opportunities to stockpile silverware along the way. As worthy as some of those Cork teams were, for example, Babs Keating’s Tipperary team could have easily won seven Munsters in a row from 1987–1993, and maybe three All-Irelands in a row to go with them from 1989–1991, at a time when hurling was far less competitive than it is today. But they suffered a few bad losses, none more so than the shock defeat to Galway in 1993 that proved to be the end of an era, and would have to wait 10 years for the next one to come along.
Undoubtedly more relevant to this current team, Tipp weren’t a million miles away from their own four-in-a-row from 2014–2017 under Eamon O’Shea and Michael Ryan, losing by a single point in semi-finals to Galway twice (2015, 2017) and coming a Hawkeye decision short of winning the final in 2014, having already fallen victim to that year’s experimental rules around penalties which saw Séamus Callanan and John O’Dwyer both miss during the 70 minutes.
Sheedy’s job now is to make sure that this team doesn’t become yet another in a long line that only occasionally lived up to that “Premier” tag when it mattered. The fact that he’s coming back at all is huge, in and of itself. Institutional continuity is something that Kilkenny have made great use of for two decades, during which time Tipperary (nine managers, including Sheedy twice) and Cork (ten managers, including Jimmy Barry-Murphy twice) have been hitting the reset button over and over. But his return for the 2020 season guarantees nothing in itself, other than a solid platform on which to build. The building itself still has to be erected, so the speak, and it’s a long time since a Tipperary team has managed to do it.
Yet this is the first time that Tipperary have won three in a calendar decade since, you guessed it, the 1960s. Tipperary’s greatest period saw them win four All-Irelands in five years (1961, 1962, 1964 and 1965), but it’s not lost on Sheedy that this team should now, arguably, be breathing that same rarefied air: “That means something to us. It means something because I think this team had had more people saying what they weren’t over the last 10 years than what they were. And when people look back on this decade, they’ll see a Tipperary team that won. Because maybe instead of going back to the sixties all the time…maybe we should talk about this decade. Because I think at the moment in this Tipperary squad, we have some of the best players ever to wear that blue-and-gold jersey”.
Inspirational words. And he’s not wrong, you know. The fact that it unfolded in the shadow of Kilkenny’s greatest era, perhaps the greatest era of
any team (eleven All-Irelands in sixteen years), means that it doesn’t get much attention in comparison, but this has been the most sustained period of success the county has enjoyed in over half a century. That already places a number of these players amongst a select group.
It starts all the way back in 2006 with the first All-Ireland title that Sheedy (as manager) won with Tipperary, at minor level. Four of Tipperary’s outstanding performers last Sunday – Callanan, Pádraic Maher, Brendan Maher and Noel McGrath – were cornerstones of that team, and the latter three repeated the feat twelve months later under Sheedy’s successor (again), Declan Ryan. Over the subsequent thirteen years, alongside several other graduates from those 2006 and 2007 teams who became stalwarts of the senior panel (such as ‘Bonner’ Maher, Mickey Cahill and James Barry), that core of players has delivered six Munster titles and three All-Irelands, as well as an U-21 title in 2010 and a National League in 2008.
I grew up on, and will always love, that ‘87–‘93 team; and you could argue that Babs’ team delivered a similar haul in a shorter space of time (five Munster titles in 1987, 1988, 1989, 1991 and 1993, two All-Irelands in 1989 and 1991, an U-21 All-Ireland in 1989, and a National League in 1988). Crucially, though, only a single underage All-Ireland success arrived during that period to keep the senior team ticking over, and none at minor level. Its success had been built on a string of underage successes in the early 1980s (two minor titles in 1980 and 1982, and four U-21 titles in seven years from 1979 to 1985) which spawned the likes of Nicky English, Pat Fox, Colm Bonnar, Noel Sheehy, John Kennedy, Ken Hogan, Joe Hayes, Aidan Ryan, Bobby Ryan and Paul Delaney. With fewer in the way of quality reinforcements coming through at the end of the decade, however, when that team reached its cliff it fell right off.
The minor titles that have subsequently arrived post-2010, in 2012 and 2016 (the latter Tipperary’s first senior/minor double since 1949, incidentally), have sustained the senior team’s longevity to an extent that never quite happened for the ‘87–‘93 panel. Ronan Maher and Barry Heffernan, both imperious on Sunday, came out of 2012 alongside John McGrath and Michael Breen, and Ger Browne, Jake Morris and Mark Kehoe emerged from the 2016 minors to each notch points off the bench against Kilkenny (Jerome Cahill is also waiting in the wings). Meanwhile, the U-20s will line out against Cork at the weekend as they seek to win the county’s first back-to-back titles at that level since 1981.
All of which means that quite aside from the continuity afforded by Sheedy returning for 2020 (hopefully with a full backroom team that continues to employ the tactical genius of Eamon O’Shea, an inspired addition in February), the competition for places should continue to be vibrant. And with the oldest players on the senior panel (Callanan, Noel McGrath, Páidi and Brendan Maher) only just turned 30 and with plenty of hurling surely left in their legs yet, Tipperary will enter the 2020 All-Ireland Championship in as good a position as they ever have to repeat, despite facing arguably the greatest level of competition that any champion ever has.
If they do it, if they add a fifth All-Ireland inside eleven years (that would also make it seven finals/ten semi-finals in twelve), maybe add a Munster or League title in the process, they become the greatest Tipperary team since colour TV (I'm convinced that a post-1971 Tipperary XV would already feature a number of them). That’s the prize awaiting them, and if Sheedy can guard against complacency and ensure that the hunger remains in a way that it maybe didn’t in 1990, 1992, 2002, 2011 or 2017, at least not in comparison to Tipperary’s rivals in those years, they have every chance.
Kilkenny will be back too, but if Sunday did nothing else, it illustrated once and for all that they’re now mere mortals just like the rest of us: mere mortals who bemoan refereeing decisions as being defining moments, who have maybe a handful of outstanding players and a number of very good ones rather than a team riddled from back to front with all-time greats, who have to rely on tactics to change games rather than simply possessing superior players, who sometimes have to run around helplessly while a merciless opposition outscores them by 14 points, who haven’t won an All-Ireland in four years and counting. The rest of the hurling community, from Cork to Dublin, Wexford to Galway, should smell feline blood in the air and act accordingly.
Brian Cody once used his position to intimidate Marty Morrissey for asking a perfecty valid question over a penalty that the whole world outside the borders of Kilkenny knew well was a bullshit decision. He said that “...we’re supposed to say nothing about referees and I make a habit of saying absolutely nothing about referees...” as his team achieved immortality by becoming only the second ever to win four senior All-Irelands in a row in 2009. But as the years went by, as the key, legendary cornerstones of his team aged into retirement and every victory became harder fought (e.g. no Leinster titles in 2012 or 2013, Tipperary scoring 1-24 from play and winning two penalties as his team struggled to cope with the movement of O’Shea’s forwards in 2014), he began to change his tune.
“They were handed an opportunity which was a completely wrong decision,” he said of Tipperary after the replay in 2014. “We didn’t speak about it the last day but it was criminal. People can say that I am whingeing and moaning all they like, but I am telling the truth”. And on Sunday, he appeared to argue that a referee shouldn’t take the word of his officials on the field when referencing Richie Hogan’s red card (“...you need to be very, very certain to issue a red card and there was a big discussion for quite a while between referee and linesman...”)
Between that, ‘King Henry’ rambling about “common sense” at half-time, Eddie Brennan tweeting about “consistency please” over Cathal Barrett bloodying Hogan’s nose (Tommy Walsh split the referee in the 2011 final while aiming for a Tipp player, I don’t recall the same reaction then), and Jackie Tyrell talking about “the spirit of the All-Ireland” later that night and making the accusation that Cathal Barrett “went down way too easy” after Hogan’s challenge (Barrett’s priceless response: “I got hit in the jaw, what does he want me to do?”), it’s clear that the team which has always pushed the envelope as much as anyone, that cynically fouled Tipp players for fun around the goal in both games in 2014 because they knew there was more chance of Marty Morrissey winning a beauty pageant than Tipp scoring a penalty under those ridiculous rules, have now changed their attitude towards referees entirely.
And why is that? Well, it’s not rocket science: they haven’t won an All-Ireland since 2015, haven’t won Leinster since 2016, one of their former bitches, Wexford, who they beat 5-25 to 0-16 as recently as the 2015 provincial semi-final, have knocked them out of two of the last three Leinster Championships, and their greatest rivals have just dismantled them to the tune of 14 points in front of the whole world. It’s not so easy to glide above the random twists of the knife meted out by officials when the margins for victory have narrowed to such an extent.
Which brings me neatly on to Cody’s tactics. Tommy Walsh once said of him that “Brian wouldn’t be going around having chats with you. He’d never ask you to watch this or watch that, your left side, your right side. He’d just say: “Go out and take over the field”. That’s all he ever used to say to me. When he says that to you, you’d be saying to yourself ‘Let’s go be Man of the Match then’. It didn’t always work out, but that’s how you’d feel”. Very simple, and incredibly effective when you’re saying it to a Tommy Walsh, a J.J. Delaney, a Henry Shefflin, a Richie Power, a Jackie Tyrell or a Michael Fennelly, I bet.
But there’s not too many players of that calibre left in Kilkenny’s ranks now, and even T.J. Reid was helpless under the constant barrage of high ball he was obliged to challenge for in the second-half on Sunday, against the obvious numerical and aerial superiority of the Maher brothers and Heffernan. A few tactical tweaks would have been no harm, and yet they never came. Kilkenny’s mix of superior skill, physicality and intensity was once enough to dominate virtually every opponent, including some very good Tipperary teams, but on Sunday they needed ingenuity from the sideline. It never came, and that had absolutely nothing to do with the absence of Hogan, who was correctly sent off as Tipperary began to get on top.
Kilkenny may well be back to win next year, but they’ve got some serious work to do.
