Maintaining positive vibe is priority for Tipperary hurlers when they face Clare

There has seldom been a more unpredictable league series than that of 2025. Traditionally, we’ve been accustomed to some erratic outcomes, but this year’s variability has hit a new level entirely.

Kilkenny’s toppling of Limerick at the weekend was the latest episode in uncertainty. The fall-out from that outcome has been major: Tipperary are safely through to the final while Clare and Wexford are relegated to division 1B for 2026. All that remains to be decided is Tipperary’s final opponents; the Cork/Galway game this weekend at Páirc Uí Chaoimh will supply the answer.

It’s been a strange league then, not one to enrich the punters, with so many games going against expectations. Another odd aspect has been the number of away wins.

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The six rounds played to date involved 18 games, with victory going to the visiting team on ten occasions; the hosts won seven encounters and there was one drawn match. It demolishes the traditional belief that you win your home games and hope for the best on your travels.

But it’s the swings from round to round that has been the strangest aspect of all. For many teams a winning day was followed by a losing one and vice versa. Galway slumped to Tipperary in their opening match but then floored Kilkenny at Nowlan Park the next day. Kilkenny themselves slumped to Tipperary and then knocked Limerick out of the reckoning in the next outing.

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Clare folded to lowly Wexford at Cusack Park and then toppled Limerick at the Gaelic Grounds; that in turn was followed by humiliation to six-goal Cork at Ennis. And so it goes.

Explaining all this league volatility takes you into the realms of speculation. Of its nature the league takes place at a time of year when teams are pursuing heavy training schedules, with the championship as the ultimate target. What happens the week before a match impacts energy and performance levels.

There’s also the issue of absentees through injury or other factors. Missing key players can significantly impact overall team performance. Thereafter you can add your own musings to explain the ups and downs.

Through all the chaos Tipperary have been the steadiest side in the competition, playing with a game-to-game consistency that others struggled to achieve. Even in a four-point defeat to Limerick, our only loss thus far, the team performance was on a par with other days.

Our game with Clare this Saturday at the Stadium is a dead rubber, with nothing tangible at stake on the league table. How that impacts the approach of both sides to the fixture will be interesting. It’s not one of those must-win fixtures but still, I’d suggest, there’s something at stake for both sides.

For Tipperary, sustaining spring momentum is surely the spur. Coming from a low base after last year’s championship disaster, Liam Cahill and colleagues have somehow managed to orchestrate a re-set of the team. A new structure has taken shape with the injection of younger talent, and the results have generated a buzz around the set-up. Maintaining that positive vibe is surely a priority.

I’d be surprised, therefore, if the management opted for wholesale changes for Saturday’s game. Keeping a winning formation is important, as is the need for further game time for developing players.

For Clare it’s something of a salvage operation. Their league has been a disaster. Relegation is unfitting for the reigning league and All-Ireland winners and with the new championship just weeks away they’ll be anxious to step up a gear. I’d imagine they’ll use this match to try and generate some positivity around a team that has seemed badly out of sorts this springtime, the Limerick match excepted.

Our last league game with Clare was the 2024 semi-final, played at Portlaoise. For me it was a game where our season pivoted in the wrong direction and never subsequently recovered. We’d done reasonably well in a handy league group to reach the semi-final but things came apart here. Our free-taking difficulties were symptomatic of a deeper malaise, one that got fully exposed in the championship.

Our historic league record against Clare, however, is very healthy. The counties met on 58 previous occasions, with Tipperary well ahead on 41 wins; Clare had 14 victories and there were three drawn games.

Saturday’s match is probably more important to Tipperary than to Clare. We don’t want form to dip at this stage as we prepare for a league final, a scenario beyond our imagination at the start of the year.

Who’ll we meet in the decider? On known form it should be Cork, though one is wary about any presumption in this odd league series. We lost to Galway in a league final as late as 2017 but, astonishingly, we haven’t met Cork in the decider since 1960. That’s an incredible 65-year gap where two of the top hurling counties never met in a league final.

Back in 1960 Tipperary prevailed by 2-15 to 3-8 in a match where Christy Ring accounted for 3-4 of the Cork total. Ring was in the final stages of his career, whereas Tipperary were on the cusp of a golden era. I still can’t believe that the counties haven’t met in a final in the intervening years.

Anyway, apologies to Thurles CBS for not devoting the entire piece this week to their fantastic Croke Cup win at headquarters. It was only the school’s second-ever in the competition and it was achieved the hard way, coming from eight-down in the second half to edge a riveting contest.

Tipperary’s underage hurling is sparkling at the moment and this was further endorsement, as All-Ireland-winning players from last year’s minor success drove the CBS to a memorable triumph, one these lads will forever have on their CVs.

What a game for swings and roundabouts. In advance I took St Flannan’s as a form line to suggest there was little between these teams and that proved to be the case. With loads of talent on either side it was some contest, one that swayed this way and that over the hour, with Thurles coming decisively in the final quarter.

In fairness Thurles began and finished in top form. They were dominant early on and stretched ahead with a string of impressive points. This looked too easy and sure enough Presentation Athenry hit back in the second quarter.

The lead dwindled and then vanished entirely, with Aaron Niland’s goal close to half time. It was a soft giveaway by Thurles from a free that should have been kept out. It left the sides on parity at half-time, which was less than the CBS deserved at that juncture.

Worse was to follow in the third quarter when the Galway lads drove on powerfully, a selection of points consolidated by a Frank Burke goal. At eight-down it looked ominous for the Tipperary school but these lads are made of stern stuff.

Perhaps it was the experience of winning that All-Ireland minor title, as well as the Harty Cup achievement, which steeled these guys.

They refused to drop heads and chipped away at the deficit. Here I was, thinking that a goal was necessary for redemption when the players showed no such impatience.

Piecemeal, point by point they nibbled away at the advantage. Young Niland made an unwise decision on a close-in free and sent it wide. He’d miss a later half-chance to draw it from out the field but his contribution after coming on was still major.
In the end it was a Cormac Fitzpatrick free that separated the sides; the Drom lad was imperious on the frees throughout.

Kieran Rossiter’s input too was massive but one is reluctant to isolate individuals. It took a team to win this contest, a team of heroes who will rightly be feted for a famous win.

Congrats to Niall Cahill and all involved.