Tipperary football manager David Power is 'very proud' of his team's style

Tipperary football manager David Power has admitted that he finds himself in "a weak position" when it comes to convincing players to opt for the big ball game instead of hurling.
Describing his relationship with county hurling manager Liam Sheedy, the Kilsheelan-Kilcash clubman said “We’d always have a talk in the off season and maybe before the season, to see what players he is looking at.
“To be honest with you, I am in kind of a weak position. If he wants the player there is a good chance they are going to go to the hurling. That’s the reality of it so.
“But look, there are still enough good footballers in the county, and I think we proved that last year as well.
“We are both in a privileged position.”  ​

One player who has made the leap from hurling to football is Conor Bowe.​ The Moyne-Templetuohy player won Munster and All-Ireland U20 hurling medals with Tipperary in 2019 but this season has thrown his lot in with the senior footballers, who of course won a historic provincial title last year.
“The last number of years the dual thing hasn’t really been allowed in Tipperary," says David Power. 
"Unfortunately, he (Bowe) hasn’t played at minor or under-21 football for Tipperary. He was playing senior club football for his club Moyle Templetuohy last year and he caught our eye.
“We asked him in and he was delighted to be getting involved. He has trained really hard. We’ll see where things take him.”

Former Dublin player Philly Ryan, who won an All-Ireland U21 title in 2012 and was on the senior panel for the 2015 All-Ireland success, is another addition to the Tipperary panel.
“He has very sound Tipp connections," says David Power. 
"His father Tommy Ryan is from Tipp. His uncle (Dinny Ryan) was on the 1971 team that won the All-Ireland hurling with Tipp. 
“He has strong Tipp roots there.At the start of this year, he decided to give it a go with Tipp. So that’s how it came about.
“To be fair to Philip he has a hunger that he wants to achieve at senior inter-county level.
“I suppose he wants to prove to himself that he is at that standard, so we are certainly going to give him that opportunity. 
“He has only been down with us for four weeks. I am sure we will see some benefits. Hopefully, if he is with us for the next couple of years we will see big benefits from being involved with a serious set-up like Dublin.
“He is a great lad. He is really working hard and he is looking forward to getting some gametime during the League.”
Speaking ahead of Tipperary's opening game in division three south of the National football league against Limerick at the LIT Gaelic Grounds at 5pm this evening, Saturday, Power described the game as "the big one" for his team. 
"We can’t look beyond the Limerick match.
"This year we are probably going to be favourites in the opening three league matches and Tipp have struggled in those situations for the last number of years.
“I think we have to use the confidence of winning the Munster Championship last year in the right way.”  
David reported "a great positivity" when the panel returned to training a few weeks ago.

“There was a great buzz. I think they (the players) were just tired of training by themselves.
“To be fair to Robbie Cannon, the strength and conditioning coach, Amy Maguire the nutritionist and Susan Giblin, the performance coach, they did great work off​-​season and the lads have come back in really good shape, from a conditioning point of view and hopefully now they will continue on with the type of work they are putting in, starting on Saturday with Limerick.​"​​ 
​When asked if there was a danger that his team might take their foot off the pedal, he replied "to be fair now what I have seen in the last couple of weeks, there is certainly a hunger there and we definitely won’t be taking Limerick for granted after what happened in the Munster semi-final (last year), it was a very tight affair. ​
“The way the league is this year, it’s about getting results to be honest with you, and hopefully the performance will start looking after itself over time.”  

Winning the Munster championship for the first time in 85 years was "huge," says David Power.
“The only big disappointment is that we haven’t really been able to spread the gospel in terms of getting the cup around to all the schools in the county.
“Hopefully with time that will happen as well. I think that’s important. Obviously, football is number two in Tipperary.
“Any time we get a win like that, we certainly have to make the most of it.”  

Power, who this week received the 2020 Gaelic Writers Association (GWA) Football Personality of the Year in association with Sky Sports, admitted that he was "very down" after the heavy defeat by Mayo in last year's All-Ireland semi-final.
“A lot of people were saying, ‘Ah look, well you won Munster.’ Ultimately I wasn’t happy with that.
“At that level, when you get up and you are playing the big, big teams we have to be able to take our chances and we had a number of opportunities. If we had got those two early chances I think it would have been a different game.
“I think we would have put Mayo on the back foot. But look, it wasn’t meant to be.
“I think we won the second half. We kept playing to the bitter end. Look, we were set up for a right hosing at half-time against Mayo, but we kept playing.
“I think the way we play when things go right it looks really good, and when things go wrong we kind of set ourselves open because we do play football.
“I personally believe we play football the right way. We don’t play deep, defensive systems.
“We try to play football and I am still very, very proud of that.”