COLUMN: Tipperary hurling at a crossroads after tame championship exit

So that’s it then. Despite all the progress and hope that had sprung during spring and into early summer, the overall mood music among Tipperary people leaving Limerick last Saturday was that it was one step forward and two steps back.

Liam Cahill summed it up perfectly after the game when he bemoaned about his team not turning up, and that was even more disappointing than the loss itself; a team coming into a big game and not playing to their potential and the management and players have to take their equal share of the blame on this occasion.

It’s not like we were not forewarned about this potential performance coming to pass, having suffered through the loss to Waterford only a month previous, and Henry Shefflin and his management team must have poured over that game to give themselves a blueprint to stifle this Tipperary team, as it was like Groundhog Day in Limerick with the very same tactical setup proving to be Tipperary’s undoing once again.

Whether it be Billy Nolan or Cathal Mannion, the same results tend to come when the Tipperary forward line has its space to roam cut off and it was incredibly frustrating to watch all game long, as the Galway defence time and time again won primary or secondary possession from long Tipperary deliveries.

It is hard to believe that Liam Cahill and Mikey Bevans would allow for a similar pattern to develop which cost their team a place in a Munster final, and so it is hard to fathom how the players couldn’t adapt to the situation on the pitch as very little changed in the way the team played all game.

Depending on how you look at the results of this year’s campaign, one could easily fall on either side of the fence when it comes to judging whether progress has been made or not.

The team played six championship games this year, winning only two of them with one of those against an Offaly team simply out of their depth at this level.

On the other hand, the stats can be viewed to show that Tipp only lost two matches out of six and that is the place in which we are now as a county.

Whether we like it or not, we have finally come to the end of a golden generation of players who made us one of the top three teams in the country consistently over the span of a decade or more. Padraic Maher, Brendan Maher, Patrick Maher, John O’Dwyer, Noel McGrath, and Seamus Callanan, gave us some great days but players of their ilk have not come through in the underage teams which have followed.

There were plenty of good performances in those initial three games in Munster, first beating Clare in Ennis, and in all honesty, were the better team against Cork in Pairc Ui Chaoimh, while they showed unreal battling qualities in the draw against Limerick - a team who usually get the better of the Premier in the final throes of games in the counties recent history.

It all pointed to progress but it will all be judged now in the shadow of the last three games and that is the big difference between the teams of the 2009-2019 era. Consistency separates the good teams from the great ones, and a lack thereof will be punished at the inter-county level if it isn’t produced in every game.

Coming back down the motorway after the game, the reality for a lot of Tipperary GAA folk will have set in that the Liam Cahill reign will take a lot longer to bear fruit than we would have hoped after the early positivity of the Ballingarry man’s first year at the helm, and it is abundantly clear that a fresh injection of players will need to be found to take Tipperary a step further next year.
The warrior figures of Seamus Callanan and Patrick Maher can’t be looked to anymore to win games for the team; younger players need to step up and take a stranglehold of the leadership to get Tipperary over the line in these games.

Whether or not the talent is there to replace the likes of the aforementioned players - if they retire - is another question entirely but acceptance is needed that we as a county are in a state of transition and are still a big distance away from challenging for All-Ireland titles.

Tipperary hurling is now in a place that it hasn’t been since the mid-2000s, and it now bears similarities to the beginning of the Liam Sheedy era. The job now rests with Liam Cahill and his management team to pick these players up with a long autumn and winter of reflection to come.