Preview: What Tipperary hurlers must do to beat Clare on Sunday

Liam Sheedy is as giddy as a schoolboy this week as he readies his charges for their Munster senior hurling championship semi-final clash with Clare in LIT Pairc na nGael, Limerick on Sunday next - afterall, the July 4 date has been etched in the brain of the panel members for many months now.

Clare's fine performance on Sunday last at Semple Stadium in defeating a fancied, though under strength, Waterford side, has given much food for thought for GAA enthusiasts, but for the Tipperary players and management the message will not have changed - whichever team came through to square up against them, Tipperary would have to meet them with fire and brimstone, confronting them head-on from the very throw-in, and managing whatever kind of style of play they encounter.

The Tipp lads have had an extra week to prepare themselves and that week has been put to very good use. So, despite the argument that Clare will have had a championship game under their belt by the time they meet Tipp on Sunday, the reality is that Liam Sheedy will have had his men primed for this encounter and will have had every opportunity to ensure that they are jumping out of their skins when the game gets underway.

“Our internal games in training have been so important to us because they have allowed us to see what players are doing and who is shaping up. We just have to hit the ground running on Sunday and those internal games have been used to ensure that we are up to the championship tempo in so far as we can be,” Liam told The Tipperary Star this week, adding that no Tipperary player would want to be anywhere else rather then heading into a Munster championship tie right now.

Again, big scorelines were a feature of the games last weekend, following on from some whopping results in the Allianz National Hurling League. And, the Tipp Manager emphasises that it is far better to have a game which features big scores, rather than having really tight, low scoring matches. The art of defending is not dead, he insists, and it is a case of ensuring that the set-up and match-up's are correct, and the structure of the team is right to help combat whatever challenge might come their way in any given game.

“We are enjoying summer hurling and you just have to bring your best to the pitch each time you go out. We have a very skillful team which can do great things with the ball, so we wont have any complaints if the day is dry and the ball is flying off the sod. That's what we love and that's what we hope we will have,” he says.

Tipperary will have to be adaptable on Sunday as Clare will bring a range of approaches in a bid to out -smart the All-Ireland champions of 2019. And, the Bannermen showed that the off-field sideshows which had damned their season since the turn of the year, and even before it, have not unduly affected their abilities on the field of play. They will have been boosted significantly by the win last weekend. So, it's game on.