Home semi-final against Dingle is game to savour for Tipperary senior football champions

Above: New Tipperary senior football manager Paul Kelly (centre), with some of his backroom team and County Football Committee chairman Conor O’Dwyer, were interested spectators at the Munster Club Senior Football Championship quarter-final between Clonmel Commercials and Newcastle West in Thurles. Picture: Eamonn McGee

It’s great for Clonmel Commercials as a Tipperary team to look forward to playing a Kerry team, Dingle, in the Munster Club Football Championship semi-final, the Clonmel team’s manager says.

Speaking after his team beat Newcastle West in the quarter-final, Tommy Morrissey said “I have seen Dingle on Clubber (television), but outside of that I haven’t paid too much attention to them”.

“Obviously they (Dingle) have a lot of household names involved and they’re from the stronghold of Kerry, so it goes without saying they’ll come into the Munster semi-final as raging hot favourites, but it’s an occasion where we’re at home,” he said, as he looked forward to the semi-final on Sunday week, November 26.

He stated last Sunday, “Venue-wise, we’re not going to commit yet. We’ll have a look at Clonmel again, and we hopefully have Semple Stadium as an option as well. We will consider both”.

At this stage it looks as the match will be played at FBD Semple Stadium, with a 1.30 throw-in time.

In the lead-up to last weekend’s game, how much did they reference their defeat by Newcastle West at the same venue in last year’s semi-final?

“There wasn’t any type of revenge mission, or (a sense of) ‘we need to get one over on these’, none of that.

“There was hurt from what we felt was letting ourselves down last year. We didn’t perform last year at all and that was more what the players were tuned into.

“You can lose your focus saying ‘we need to get one over on these lads’. You need to stick to your game plan and make sure that’s implemented, as opposed to getting distracted by revenge, and that can tend to draw you into yellow cards, fouls and so on. We didn’t go near that.

“The one good thing about sport is that when it lets you down, and we were let down last year by ourselves, the opportunity is there to get yourself back up again, and we got that opportunity today.

“That is more so the mantra I was going with, ‘you put yourself in a position last year that we couldn’t get out of and lost the game; don’t put yourself in that position this year’.

“And to be fair we did well, we led the game from the start. While there was some frustration within that, we still won the match and you’re not too worried on the back of that".