Once more unto the breach for Tipperary hurlers as championship begins

Above: Three of Tipperary’s most experienced players, Noel McGrath, captain Ronan Maher and Seamus Kennedy, will be hoping to help their team make a winning start to the Munster Senior Hurling Championship when they play Cork at FBD Semple Stadium at 4pm this Sunday. Picture: John Sheridan/Sportsfile

It’s hurling’s version of a Russian doll, a fiercely-contested championship within a championship, much more ruthless than the version that Leinster has to offer. And it will all explode into life this Sunday afternoon with the meeting of Tipperary and Cork at FBD Semple Stadium at 4pm, and Clare and Waterford in Ennis at 2pm.

The Munster senior championship is wildly unpredictable. A minefield and a bearpit are some of the words used to describe its ultra-competitive, unforgiving nature. Tipperary manager Liam Cahill calls it “cut throat”. It’s no coincidence that the winners of the last eight All-Ireland championships have come from the province.

For each county it’s a fast-paced, helter skelter series of four matches in five weeks that must be safely navigated before any team can even begin to contemplate the prospect of climbing the steps of the Hogan Stand at the end of July. No sooner will Tipperary’s match against Cork have ended than they’ll be preparing for a trip south to play Waterford in Azzurri Walsh Park on the following Sunday.

As another championship looms, Liam Cahill’s side will be attempting to boldly go where no team from the county has gone in 61 years. Not since 1965 has the MacCarthy Cup remained in the Premier County twelve months after it had been won. In the intervening years, seven Tipp teams have tried and failed to win back-to-back All-Irelands following the triumphs in 1971, 1989, 1991, 2001, 2010, 2016 and 2019. That is one of the ambitions for Tipperary when they begin their Munster campaign in a rematch of last year’s All-Ireland final against Cork, which is also the first step in the defence of their All-Ireland crown.

Understandably, Tipp don’t want the talk of retaining the MacCarthy Cup to totally dominate the early championship narrative. They’ll want to avoid such a distraction as they set their sights on being one of the three teams to emerge from Munster.
In a recent interview, defender Michael Breen says winning the All-Ireland title again is not the only motivation for the team this season.

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“The sole motivation is to work hard and get a really proud performance for ourselves and for the Tipp public as well, which is most important,” he said.

Interestingly, he also pointed out that Tipp haven’t won the Munster title in ten years, since they beat Waterford by 5-19 to 0-13 in the 2016 final played in Limerick. A provincial title success often gets overlooked nowadays, especially since the removal of the necessity to be successful in the province to compete in the All-Ireland championship.

Meanwhile, Liam Cahill has also stated, “I can genuinely say, every night we’ve come into training since we commenced last November, there’s never been a feeling around the expectation of doing back-to-back All-Irelands.

“It never enters our head. It’s always about trying to keep consistent in our performances, and keep trying to improve”.

The National League campaign was something of a curate’s egg for Tipp. There were a few poor performances, especially against Limerick; a good display against Galway, a great comeback win against Waterford, and a closing victory against Kilkenny.

The absence of a league title for the county has now been extended to 18 years. However, you would imagine that Liam Cahill and company won’t have lost too much sleep over that particular famine, as they steel themselves for the more important challenges that await.

After the Waterford and Kilkenny games, he said that the focus would be on improving the players’ hurling touch and sharpness ahead of the championship. That suggests that what mostly went before that in the depths of winter and early spring was a hard slog to get fitness levels back up to the required levels, which, for instance, might explain the heavy-legged performance against Limerick in Thurles on February 21, when they lost by 15 points, 0-36 to 0-21.

Cork will arrive in Thurles on Sunday hell bent on revenge for last year’s All-Ireland final, and a victory that many of their supporters will feel they left behind them in Croke Park last July. The Rebels haven’t lifted the MacCarthy Cup since 2005, so ending that famine of 21 years will be a major motivating factor in the coming months.

They approach the campaign under a new manager, Ben O’Connor, who was on that successful team in 2005. The Newtownshandrum clubman had plenty to say for himself during the early days of his reign, though it’s interesting to note that he has since toned down the rhetoric. At the beginning of February, after his team beat Galway, he claimed that soccer was “gone like soccer,” with red cards, yellow cards and technical areas, which he saw as “the fellas above trying to cleanse hurling”.

Let’s hope that the soccer-like antics of some of his county’s supporters, when they have felt the need to boo Tipperary freetaker Darragh McCarthy, won’t be evident in Thurles on Sunday.

The many great moments and memories from last year's All-Ireland success will last a lifetime but for now they must be parked, as a new championship dawns. Tipperary enter the fray with the best wishes of the county behind them.

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