Reaching All-Ireland final is no flash in the pan, says Tipperary boss Liam Cahill

While the Tipperary players and management realised from the start of this year that they had a huge job of work to do, “always in the back of your mind you’re saying if we get a run here we could end up in an All-Ireland Final, and if we get there we’ll have a real chance of winning it”.

That’s according to manager Liam Cahill, as his team prepares for Sunday’s All-Ireland final against Cork (throw-in 3.30pm).

“That’s not sounding arrogant in any way whatsoever. But in Tipperary we like to think that when we put ourselves in these positions, we give ourselves a great chance.

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“When you’re in a final you’re always going to reflect on your journey and getting to the final. And we’ve come through some really tough games, with big performances and big moments in matches, all through the Munster championship; the Clare game in Ennis, and Waterford coming back level with us with ten minutes to go in Thurles, the All-Ireland semi-final against Kilkenny.

“So this is not a flash in the pan from this group of players. They’re doing it consistently throughout the 2025 season, so I think we’ll gain huge encouragement from that.

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“It will be something important for us if we can bring this thing down to the last five or ten minutes of the All-Ireland and we’re still in the hunt, I think we will have huge resilience and belief in our ability to get the job done”.

Was he inspired by people saying that reaching an All-Ireland semi-final would be enough for Tipperary this year, that it was bonus territory?

“It’s a little bit of an ease because you’re starting to realise that people are being realistic about what needs to happen.

“There was a sense of relief that people were starting to understand the job of work that needed to be done and continues to be done, but now I think it will switch to, ‘we’re in a final, we’re huge underdogs, but there’s still a little chance there that we might just get something that will help us in our continuous progression into the next couple of years’”.

The manner of the semi-final victory over Kilkenny, to win when two points down and a man down, was that the manifestation of what Liam Cahill wants to see from his team?

“That’s exactly it. We came out of Nowlan Park last year (after the All-Ireland Minor Final win) on the back of such a huge performance from young players of 16 and 17 years of age showing us what we try to ingrain in our players from a coaching and management perspective.

“The minor win gave us a great sense of pride, but also a great sense of realisation as a senior squad and senior management team, that we need to be doing that from where we’re at and the responsibility we have to the jersey. That has to come from the top down, we should be inspiring young fellows rather than they inspiring us.

“The players have seen what’s now required, and have committed to it, and thankfully we’re bringing it out ourselves in our performances to date”.

Did it ever feel that he had come in at the wrong time, that there might have been a better time for Liam Cahill to take this position?

“It all depends on the manager, what the mindset of the manager is. Are you taking on a role to be personally successful or taking on the role to genuinely improve the team regardless of the results. Are you taking it on as a hurling person, or a GAA person who loves hurling. Yes, it’s performance-driven and performance-related. But when people look back on managerial terms, they judge it by what you’ve won.

“But the reality of it is at the time I came in in 2023 most people in Tipperary knew that there was a big change coming. Unfortunately, we had a number of really top-class players for the last decade who were just coming towards the end of their inter-county careers, and the gap between what needed to come in and replace them, wasn’t maybe fully ready at the time.

“The meetings I had and the discussions I had when I accepted the role would have been around absolutely having time, being given an opportunity and a chance, and having patience. But unfortunately, when you’re in a county as demanding as Tipperary not everybody sees that and understands that, and expectedly so.

“It’s not too different to Kerry from a football perspective, the demands are really high, so that brings added pressure as well.

“For me it was always going to be a three-year-plus plan. Obviously the County Board agreed a three-year term initially, and in fairness to them as well they stood by me, and backed me to do what the vision was, to try and bring as many players as possible and a new generation of players as quickly as possible, and as structured as possible without pushing fellows too soon. They had patience. Look, we find ourselves where we are, thank God, but again there is huge credit due to the players, and all the panel who have come to real top commitment levels, from last October onwards to get us where we are today.”

Was he confident that the younger players would perform at Croke Park, in the semi-final?

“I wouldn’t say I was confident, but I was happy that it wouldn’t faze us too much. Look, our start against Kilkenny was poor, we had eight players who had never played in Croke Park before. We can cast it aside and say it has no bearing altogether but it would have been a little bit of a concern that it would take us a while to adjust. As it transpired it did, our performance wasn’t where it needed to be for the first 18/20 minutes, Kilkenny raced into an eight points to a goal lead.

“It will help us, and will have to help us, leading into the final that we came through a fairly rigorous run-out in Croke Park in an All-Ireland semi-final with a big crowd there as well.

“We have players in Tipp, when their confidence is up, they like the big arena, they like performing, but they don’t curl up. I know they won’t come Sunday, and they’ll embrace the challenge, and it won’t be for the want of trying.”