PREVIEW: Can Tipperary reproduce the energy of previous outing against resurgent Rebels?

Munster Senior Hurling Championship - Round 4 - Preview

Tipperary vs Cork in FBD Semple Stadium, Sunday, May 19th @ 4 pm

The result that Tipperary didn’t want occurred in Pairc Úi Chaoimh last weekend. A rejuvenated Cork pulled out all the stops to topple All-Ireland champions Limerick on the banks of the River Lee, and they will now be bullish and full of confidence ahead of their trip to take on Tipperary in FBD Semple Stadium in what is now essentially a knockout Munster Championship like the great days of old.

A red wave is set to descend on Thurles this Sunday for the clash of the old Munster rivals, and if the talk around the tickets for the game is to be believed, Cork will easily outnumber the home Tipperary support with a rumoured crowd of 30,000 Corkonians with tickets snapped up straight after the Limerick win, and that, along with what will be a confident Rebel outfit will make this a massive task for the Tipperary hurlers.

Hope was plentiful in the lead-up to Cork’s clash with Limerick last Saturday, that the Rebels would be out on their ear after suffering a third successive loss in this year’s Munster campaign against Limerick, which in theory, would have made Tipperary’s task that bit more manageable facing into the round 4 clash.

Surprisingly to many though, this provincial championship threw another spanner into the works and supporters from both counties will get a throwback to the knockout Munster fare of years gone by; Tipperary now needs another backs-to-the-wall performance this Sunday.

The draw in Waterford two weekends ago was full of grit and the players can take a lot of confidence from the way they performed throughout the game, in terms of the general play, but also in the responses they had to several sucker-punches in the game.

The late comeback was full of guts and it has to be said, that the team definitely deserved a result from the game.
Consistency has been an issue for both Tipp and Cork in recent years and, from a Tipperary perspective, they will need the top performers from Walsh Park to show up again. Ronan Maher, Mark Kehoe, and Alan Tynan were immense in the game and Liam Cahill will be banking on more of the same from these and others.

While the response to the Limerick malfunction was heartening, some of the key players are not performing to full capacity currently. The likes of Gearoid O’Connor and Jake Morris have been underwhelming by their own standards, and given the leaky nature of both defenses, Tipperary will need to be in full scoring flow on Sunday.

That Cork ambush of Limerick was largely unexpected, and if the results weren’t, the manner of it certainly was as the directness of the Cork play caused Limerick huge issues - a tactic many didn’t expect - with Shane Barrett making massive hay off the breaks from Patrick Collins bombs and so there will be no surprises to Tipp who will have had the benefit of the two-week break plus the lead in the Cork legs after an all-or-nothing performance to keep their championship alive.
Patrick Horgan and his fellow forwards in the likes of the aforementioned Barrett, Seamus Harnedy and Alan Connolly pose a huge threat to Tipp, who albeit, have been bolstered with the return of Cathal Barrett and it will be interesting to see the match-ups come Sunday at 4 pm.

Personnel-wise, Conor Stakelum and Barry Heffernan will be close to a return after missing the first two games of the championship and so, will come back into the reckoning while Dan McCormack has not featured much at all this championship and he may be needed in the white heat of battle here, with freshness an advantage for the Borris-Ileigh man.

In terms of managing the Cork pace, Tipperary will have had a fair degree of preparation in the Waterford game as the Deise have as much pace around their team as Cork, so there will likely be few changes to the team that started that draw a fortnight ago, but there is no denying that Tipperary’s season is once again on the line on Sunday, and they will need to carry consistency forward here.