Tipperary legend says that winning All-Ireland final would be the icing on the cake

Tipperary have “absolutely nothing to lose” in Sunday’s All-Ireland Final.

That’s according to Nicky English, an All-Ireland winner as a player (1989 and 1991) and as manager in 2001.

“We will have that experience of playing in the final and will be all the better for it next year,” he says.

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With the Under 20s having won the All-Ireland championship, he believes it has already been a very successful year for the county and winning the senior title on Sunday would be “the real crowning” of 2025, and make it a superb year.

His ambition for Tipperary this year was for the county to try and qualify from the Munster championship, get to an All-Ireland semi-final and see what happened from there.

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“We have been improving all along and aren’t as much a forlorn hope as in the second round of the provincial championship, when we were beaten by Cork.”

Even in that game at Páirc Uí Chaoimh, he said the team still showed a lot of heart in what looked like a hopeless situation at half-time, after Darragh McCarthy had been sent off in the opening minute.

Beating All-Ireland champions Clare in Ennis in their next game was a big win, which meant they had a route out of Munster in their own hands.

Once they qualified from the provincial championship, he said that took care of people’s expectations for the team for the year, and they could move on from there.

Casting his mind back to January and the opening round of the national league against Galway in Salthill, he said there was talk before the game about the threat of relegation, the need for Tipperary to bring in new players and what a difficult year it would be for the county.

However, the team won and several players who played that day, including Robert Doyle, Andrew Ormond, Darragh McCarthy, Eoghan Connolly and Sam O’Farrell, had found their feet and cemented their places in the side.

Nicky believes that Andrew Ormond has made a huge difference this year.

And the fact that so few goals have been conceded in recent games is also down to the workrate of the forwards and midfielders, which he says has been very admirable.

In his view, the mindset of the Tipp side is a lot better than it was at the start of the Munster championship campaign.

“The confidence is much higher now.

“The team is more together and used to playing with each other.

“They have had some very hard-fought wins that had to be fought out in the last ten minutes.”

He says that cutting off the supply lines to Cork’s full forward line will be key to Tipperary’s prospects, although ultimately those players didn’t contribute a lot in last year’s final against Clare.

“Tippeary are not going to go away.

“They will continue to work hard and will keep turning up for every ball.

“The further the game goes, the more pressure will be on Cork,” he says.

Tipp were beaten by Cork by 10 points in the league final, and by 15 points in their championship encounter at the end of April.

Now the job is to close the gap between the teams even further.

“Tipperary are a lot better than they were in that championship game in April.

“And an All-Ireland Final doesn’t necessarily go along the lines you would expect,” he says.