HUGE: Tipperary ace Jason Forde makes a big admission ahead of the 2026 championship season

Tipperary’s All-Ireland triumph in 2025 will go down as one of the great against-the-odds stories in modern hurling.

Only two summers earlier, the Premier managed a single win in Munster, before finishing bottom in 2024 as pressure mounted on Liam Cahill’s reign. But in the space of 12 months, everything changed.

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A morale-boosting All-Ireland U20 success over Kilkenny gave fresh hope early in the summer, with emerging talent like Sam O’Farrell, Oisín O’Donoghue, and Darragh McCarthy stepping into the senior set-up.

Still, few outside the camp believed an All-Ireland breakthrough was imminent, especially after heavy defeats to Cork in both the league final and Munster championship.

Yet Tipperary found their spark. A semi-final win over Kilkenny, driven by Jason Forde’s late scores, set up a third showdown of the year with Cork.

This time, Cahill and coach Mikey Bevans sprung a tactical surprise, deploying Bryan O’Mara as an extra defender to shut down Cork’s forward line. The ploy worked to perfection, with Tipp climbing the Hogan Stand steps for the first time since 2019.

Speaking to RTÉ Sport, Forde admitted the scale of the achievement is still sinking in.

"It’s been brilliant. To get to Croke Park and then to go out and win it, it was the stuff of dreams," the Silvermines sharpshooter said.

"This year it was just about going back and trying to right those wrongs from 2024. We got in the neck from a lot of people in Tipp. We’re a mad hurling county and people don’t be shy about letting you know what you haven’t done so well."

Forde, now a three-time All-Ireland winner, also backed Cahill’s decision to alter tactics for the decider.

"I wasn’t shocked, to be honest," he told RTÉ. "Bryan [O’Mara] has played that role for UL for years and he’s well equipped to do it. You saw that Cork opened us up for goals in the league final and Munster, so we had to do something to counteract that. Byran played it superbly well. It was really clever from the lads."

Now 12 years on from his senior debut, Forde remains central to Tipp’s ambitions. He finished among the championship’s top scorers and isn’t planning on stepping away just yet.

"The age profile of the team and coming off such a high, it would be hard to kind of leave that behind. Once the body is good and you’re injury-free, why not stay out as long as you can?"

For Tipperary hurling, 2025 will be remembered as the year Cahill’s project delivered – and as Forde himself admits, it may just be the start of another golden era.

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