REACTION: 'We just couldn’t get our noses in front to put them under that extra pressure'

Tipperary U20 manager Brendan Cummins will discuss his future with the Tipperary County Board in the coming months after the curtain comes down on the 2024 season for his team in Nowlan Park.

“Our term is up now and the three years have been good,” said Cummins in the aftermath of the loss to Offaly.

Cummins was extremely disappointed in the wake of the loss but was full of admiration for the team on the pitch, and the team in the background who put so much effort in all day, culminating in a Munster title and with his three-year term now up the question of his future comes into the equation in the coming months.

“If you look at the development of players, this year it was nice to win something and to win a Munster championship was great,” he said.

"I’m blessed with the backroom team that I have. There’s not a huge amount of us but every one of them are doing the work of two or three. It’s been a fantastic experience, I must say, the last two or three years.

“I always sit down with the county for a review in a couple of months’ time. We’ll sit down, chat, and see what the world looks like. The management game these days, it’s finicky in a lot of ways. We just have to sit down with the county board and see what the story is.”

“I think part of the remit when I started in this job three years ago was to yes get success but get fellas to push through to Liam Cahill’s team.

“Experiences like tonight while they do hurt and are stinging and killing all of us frankly, they’re character-building for those men inside there.

“No more than Offaly last year sitting in Thurles having been beaten by Cork, the gauntlet is thrown down to the group to see what they will do next. There are a lot of them under-age again next year and we need a lot of development on them and let’s see.”

Positives will be taken from the year as a whole though with this appearance in the showpiece U20 final a year ahead of schedule with 20 of the 24-man matchday panel eligible for the grade next year.
But it was little consolation to the gutted players who lay devastated on the ragged Nowlan Park turf on Saturday evening at full-time.

“The boys are gutted,” Cummins revealed.

“Offaly were just always that little bit ahead of us as we went through the game and the lads battled really hard which they’ve been doing all year.

“We just couldn’t get our noses in front to put them under that extra pressure.

“I think that little bit of experience they had from last year where they had nine or 10 of the group that played in an All-Ireland final, down the home straight you could see that in them. But I have to say I couldn’t be any prouder of these men inside there.

“At the start of the year, we were no-hopers. Everyone was saying we didn’t have a chance, blah, blah, blah stuff, which you normally hear anyway. But they really battened down the hatches and even today when it was going against us they fought and fought and fought and that’s the spirit inside those young men there.”

"Obviously, we had wides in the second half and they had turnovers but I don’t think you can beat that extra experience that Offaly had, you know.

“I think that that was another deciding factor in it; when they got ahead, they were comfortable ahead to be fair to them. That’s why they are All-Ireland champions tonight.”