'It's not totally out of our hands' says Tipperary manager Liam Kearns regarding relegation

After Tipp’s defeat against Kildare in Newbridge on Saturday last, manager Liam Kearns was making no excuses for this latest setback.

“We nearly got out of there with a point which we didn’t deserve. We are just not getting the breaks that’s the way it is with us at the moment. We came here to play with the wind and we didn’t even win the toss that’s the way it is. We are struggling to get a break anywhere we go,” he said after the one-point defeat.

“We just have to keep our heads down and keep working at it, that’s the reality of it but we didn’t play well. We played very well in the first half. Five points to two against that wind was excellent with about five minutes to go but we conceded 1-2, the goal was a killer. It was set up then for Kildare in the second half and we had to go at them and they were able to turn us over and they missed a good few chances. Their two scores at the end you can’t say they didn’t deserve to win the match with those two scores. You were wiping your eyes against the wind and I don’t know how they kicked them they were unreal scores.”

But the Tipp manager was happy with the substitutions he made and two of them got important goals.

“We made a couple of substitutions and they worked really well. Liam Boland gave us 1-1, a brilliant goal, and Dan O’Meara gave us a great goal as well and we very nearly stole out of here but we didn’t deserve it, we know that, but you’d take the point if you got it but we didn’t get it,” he added.

TALK OF SWASHBUCKLING FOOTBALL IS RIDICULOUS 

When it was suggested to him that Tipp were slow to take the game to Kildare and only did so towards the end, the Kerryman replied.

We were playing against a gale force wind. I hear rubbish talk about we want to play swashbuckling football like we did in 2016. That’s ridiculous.  We had Fox as sweeper when we beat Derry when we beat Cavan in fact all of our games. People are not taking into to account that we have two of the best half-backs not there, attacking half-backs, and they were our platform for an awful lot of our attacking play, we just don’t have them, Robbie Kiely and Bill Maher.”

He went on to add: “And we didn’t have Michael Quinlivan our All-Star forward till today and in fairness to him he did really well for a guy who hasn’t kicked a ball since before Christmas. I thought he did really well and I was delighted with him and that we got a full game out of him was great. At the end of the day you have to set up against a gale force wind, you have to set up to try and contain them which we did a really good job but we just conceded a goal. They pulled out defence to one side and they got in and in fairness to them they stuck it in the corner of the net and that was the killer blow for us. And then we gave them two more points afterwards. But we said inside it was vital that we kept playing from a scoring average point of view and all that.”

Looking towards the final game of the league on Sunday next against Clare, he went on to say.

“It’s not totally out of our own hands. We have to hold our end up and we’re in Thurles and we have to win. Hopefully we can turn up and perform. But Clare are a tough team. Again all these teams are at full strength, we’re not. We are down 10 players and we are struggling because of that we just don’t have our panel we are getting fellows back slowly but when they are months out they need time, they need time to train and they need time to play matches and we don’t have time,” concluded the Tipp boss.