2/9/16
On Sunday next Tipperary will play Kilkenny in the All Ireland Hurling Final in Croke Park. Nervous? You betcha. It hard to escape the feeling that this is the most important match in Tipperary hurling in a generation. For one of the most talented cohorts of hurlers we have produced it is likely to define their playing careers. Nine years on since Brendan Maher lifted the Irish Press cup, with the last of the Cummins/Kelly/Corbett era gone and in their prime athletic years: their time is now. And naturally it's Kilkenny who stand opposite, the team who have ended their hopes in five of the last seven championships.
Assessing the true worth of Tipp's performances this year is a difficult task. They were essentially untested in Munster. The compass pointed in all directions after the semi-final win over Galway. Depending on the sunniness of your disposition you could see echoes of the 2010 win over Galway: character and composure overcoming self-inflicted handicaps, or the 2011 win over Dublin: comfortable early going belying poverty of attacking approach and a sweaty stumble over the finish line.
In truth there were elements of both. The jitters recurred all through: the two Galway goals were largely self-inflicted, while for Shane Maloney's final point Tipp players fumbled in possession twice in the build up. We swapped early midfield dominance for complete subjugation before a few key contributions in the endgame. Our attack completely lost their way for long periods. Yet at other times they hurled with a sublime artistry. The seven points we scored in response to Galway's opening goal was as good as we've hurled all year; yet we failed to score for sixteen minutes after that. The two goals in the closing stages were stunning, yet we failed to add even a single point in the closing stages.
Where then lies the true worth of this team? The reconsituted defence looks in great shape. James Barry has emerged as a quiet star at full back. It's a strange turn for a player dismissed by many as too loose for top level hurling; he really revels in the close quarter combat at the edge of the square. Having Michael Cahill back fully fit and on form is a massive boost. Cathal Barrett struggled the last day but has probably been Tipp's best player over the year. Seamus Kennedy has done well at right half back, while swapping the Mahers has allowed Padraig to return to his best position and play with the freedom which makes him most effective.
The league showed the defence to be vulnerable to goals created by direct running down the middle. The Galway game suggested that that problem had not entirely gone away, however self-inflicted the scenarios. There was a noticable improvement in the second half with our half forwards and midfield noticably deep from Galway puckouts in particular, leaving very little space to run into. If that effort is replicated for the entirety of the final we will be hard to break down. That security has a necessary cost to our attack however. Sunday will tell if the balance is right. In particular Dan McCormack has brought extra ball winning to the forwards, and both he and Bonnar were evidently excellent against Galway. Their ability to come deep and win possession was vital for our foothold in the game.
Of course the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Neither player is the sweetest striker in the world, and the kind of diagonal deliveries from deep that Gearoid Ryan provided in 2010 or Walter Walsh gave Kilkenny against Waterford in the replay were not too much a feature of our play. Instead both players are more likely to carry the ball, which was effective against Galway but likely a hard road to travel against Kilkenny. Noel still can seem like a player born in the wrong era but he remains a luxury we can't live without to tip the scales back towards scoring. He seems ill suited to keeping Padraig Walsh quiet; could a swap with Bonner yield dividends here?
When it comes to going from back to front the delivery of ball from half back likewise was not always where you might want it against Galway either. High balls to the edge of the square were an effective tactic in the Munster final but less so the less day. Callinan's tenure as a centre-forward effectively ended because for a big man, standing under the dropping ball is just no his game. The genesis of his current full forward role was in the point he scored as a sub in the 2010 final after skinning the defence with a right-to-left run. Since then he has terrorised defences with his lateral movement; I'm not sure there is a forward playing today who makes better and harder runs off the ball. When Callinan returned in the league, his touch was a work in progress, but his runs had a visible and immediate effect in opening up the attack for players around him. It's an utter waste of his talents to have him parked under high balls, instead of employing him at what he excels at.
That said, high balls may bear a dividend if used in the right way. Clare game-planned Kilkenny to perfection in the league by working the ball to a wingforwardish position before launching their bombs. The chaos that ensued created the platform for victory that day. So effective was it that it's strange that no-one has tried it since. It could be a useful adjunct to our attacking play - rather than the main plank of our attack - if used sparingly on Sunday. All the evidence likewise suggests that John McGrath is the man to be under it. He has had a terrific first full championship, and a badly needed addition of a specialist forward. It's strange for county that has such a rich tradition of them but we've struggled for out-and-out corner forwards in recent times. Maybe they are an endangered species in general in the era of rotating forwards but natural scorers never go out of fashion. Niall O'Meara played better than I thought against Galway on re-examination and his facility to break ball in dangerous areas has been useful but he struggles to get in the game at times. The nod for Bubbles is no surprise on that basis. He may not be a natural corner forward either but he sure can score.
It's hard to talk about scoring without mentioning Michael Breen, who has been torching the scoreboard so far. His physical edge is also something to behold, though he and Brendan Maher struggled to impose themselves for a long period the last day. Brendan in particular stayed has been staying close to his defence to good effect and made several telling contributions in the closing stages the last day. With his notional marker the dominant David Burke doing likewise it demonstrates how the use of midfielders continues to evolve. Between keeping tabs on Richie Hogan and any other drifting forwards, contributing on the scoreboard and helping out in defence they will have their hands full, the gift of Michael Fennelly's absence notwithstanding.
With regard to Kilkenny, they continue to demonstrate remarkable facility for getting it done Sunday after Sunday. They looked cooked against Waterford the first day in particular, but they just hurled away for the seventy while Waterford collapsed in a heap around them. They have not demonstrated the same goalscoring facility as previous seasons but there were signs of life the last day. Without Fennelly to expertly knit together the attack as he did the last day though it might be harder going. Perhaps Kevin Kelly will become the latest Cody selection flyer to pay off on the big day; we can cast our minds back to the spring if we're having trouble placing him. They remain formidable.
Much will ultimately lie on whever Michael Ryan's philosophical makeover has been real. He has been impressive so far in his poise and equanamity. As everyone is well aware now we tend to do well in the classics, but are supposedly incapable of stooping to ugliness when required. It feels like we will have to go to war if we want to win this one. There may be a tide in the affairs of men, but so too sports teams. This Tipp team may have a young core but if feels like a pivotal moment is required; after a few years on the wrong end of black and amber, and act of resistence is sorely needed. If we can knit this to the killer instincts we showed against Galway in the closing stages, we won't be far off. If we can it will make it one of the sweetest of all.
14/8/15
For six consecutive seasons since 2009 Tipperary have concluded their hurling championship with a meeting against Kilkenny. It has been an unprecedented and largely unhappy run; Sunday's meeting against Galway presents the opportunity to add a seventh bead to the string. With the team now firmly in the ownership of the core of the 2010 U-21 winning side, what can be said for our chances of reaching another final in Eamon O'Shea's last year in charge?
It has been a curious summer. Given our recent habituation to qualifier-fuelled meanders and Munster preliminary rounds it has been a strange sensation to be the last team in the entirety of both championships to see action and to have but a single outing since. On the face of it it adds up to a relative paucity of evidence to divine progress from. Yet there has been enough to suggest that some vital lessons has been learned from the failure last September.
The frustrations were myriad after the replay defeat. The sense that after all the fireworks the first day we had sleepwalked into it was hard to escape. We failed to show Kilkenny - a team which has been proven to be the best adaptive machine since the T-1000 - anything different. We looked utterly befuddled when Kilkenny changed the rules of combat and packed their half of the field, getting bogged down in attack and clueless as to how to fill the swathes of space their short-handed attack took full advantage of on our own patch.
The damning part of it was that our lack of defensive organisation was a clear problem from the earliest stages of 2014. The league was a catalogue of defensive fiascos: blowing a glorious chance for a precious win in Nowlan Park by conceding five goals; leaving a chasm of space in front of Paddy Stapleton as Conor McGrath ran riot against Clare; leaving Stapleton again to be brutalised by Jonathan Glynn against Galway; and conceding an eyewatering 19 goals in 8 matches in the league in total. Then there was the rotating cast of full backs, including Tom Stapleton, Paddy Stapleton, Conor O'Mahony, Padraig Maher and finally - in desperation - James Barry. We had the short lived Brendan Maher as holding centre back experiment. By the time we reached the All Ireland Final we had lucked into something approaching a functioning defence, but still conceded enough not to win a match in which we scored 1-28, and conceded 2-17 in the replay against an attack which frequently consisted of five and even four players.
The first signs that 2015 might lead somewhere different came back in October with the appointment of Declan Fanning as a selector. A blunt critic of the way we set our backline up at times last year, he would surely help to bring some organisational focus which appeared to have been sorely lacking in 2014. Apart from a messy performance down in Cork the league was largely promising despite various injuries making it hard to put the same team out week on week. The deployment of Brendan Maher at centre forward was an indicator that we were starting to think of defence in its totality rather than focusing on just 1-7. The sudden retirement and addition of Paul Curran to the backroom team was another welcome injection of defensive know-how. Add the continued development of Cathal Barrett and the emergence of Ronan Maher and Michael Breen and the sense of clear purpose heading into the championship was stark compared to last year.
To translate that purpose into such a coherent performance against Limerick then was all the more pleasing. It can be acknowledged that Limerick's performance was a long way short of what they have produced against Tipp in recent years. Nonetheless, while the attack merely proved how they can dazzle on any day when they are allowed to play exactly as they wish, the defensive effort stood out for its unity. The role of Padraig Maher was especially interesting: for a player who has been criticised for his tendency to wander far from his supposed station when playing centre back, he played with a positional discipline which was very obvious. It was clear too that Tipp were willing to live with the threat of Declan Hannon taking the occasional long range score as a trade off for keeping Maher close to the full back line.
A subtle but important illustration of the Tipp mentality was given when Maher jogged to take a position up beside Darren Gleeson for a Limerick attacking line ball in the first half. It was from just such a situation that Richie Power pirouetted through our backline in the replayed 2014 final for a killer goal; an indication that we wouldn't be found wanting on the small details this time. Brendan Maher frequently dropped into the space his centre back vacated throughout and was complimented by James Woodlock who also frequently took up a protective position in front of the back line. When Graham Mulcahy beat his man and cut in along the endline in the first half, Padraig Maher arrived immediately when the play broke down as Kieran Bergin on the cover coursed Mulcahy away from goal. He was able to find Brendan Maher offering an outlet from a defensive position between his own '45 and '65, who immediately made the clearance which led to Callinan's second goal. A perfect illustration of our defence and notional attackers working in concert.
The Waterford game brought a different kind of challenge. It was well flagged in advance that Tipp would not be allowed to play they way that they would like against a Waterford team featuring a much publicised seven-man defence. Playing against this kind of system requires discipline in defence and patience in attack, with good use of the ball at both ends. Apart from a few high-profile Padraig Maher errors in the first half - commited as we now know while playing through injury - we dealt with Waterford's limited attacking resources with some comfort. In attack it was more of a mixed bag; patient at times, at other times we lost our way, the deliveries from defence in the second half were often too long when there was more space outside, while Callinan was guilty of shooting from poor positions when swinging the ball into the space vacated by the attendant sweeper might have borne more dividends.
Nonetheless, aided by the switch of Bubbles Dwyer to wing forward, we closed out the game with a degree of comfort. The other key move was sending Brendan Maher on fire fighting duty back on Kevin Moran. It both showed our new found tactical flexibility and what a peerless player Brendan is in the way that he can be used in numerous different roles. Former NBA coaches Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy had a discussion while commentating on the NBA finals on the difficulty of getting players to truly be selfless in pursuit of winning. Summarised, the message was that all players want to win; the problem is is that most of them only want to win on their own terms. Getting players to believe in the team and sacrifice themselves for the team is probably the hardest job for a manager. Having a captain who seems to do that every day he goes out must be a tremendous asset for Eamon O'Shea.
With Kilkenny having played both Waterford and Galway, where then would we benchmark Galway? In truth despite the positive noises coming out of Galway afterwards I thought their Leinster Final performance was disappointing. They have some nice young scoring forwards in Mannion and Flynn, while Joe Canning's goal was yet another glimpse of what might be if he could only harness that amazing talent on a more consistent basis. In general though they played without much discipline and they conceded numerous needless frees (a disease we are well familiar with). Iarla Tannion's performance was emblematic in that he played with an anachronistic abandon which is ill suited to a game where possession has become something to be treasured jealously.
They will have likely learned little more from Cork, who were wretched. Nonetheless it showcased their scoring ability and their size and strength. Their aggression can certainly trouble us if it's tempered by a little cuteness, and we have bad history with Jonathan Glynn who was a wrecking ball against Cork and looks much more effective now that they've stopped trying to make a Big Full Forward out of him. On the Tipp side Padraig Maher's shoulder has to be a concern given the key role he is fulfilling. It must be hoped that our new-found organisation can mitigate the other injury concerns we have in defence and ensure a coherent unit regardless of who lines out where. The return of Noel McGrath is a big boost if he's anywhere near fitness as our bench in attack has looked a bit threadbare. If we do the things that have taken us here we should win, but there is enough in the memory for some trepidation: 2000; 2005; the near disaster in 2010; and last year when we were on our way out until we weren't. Kilkenny await, yet again. It would be a shame to disappoint them.
On Sunday next Tipperary will play Kilkenny in the All Ireland Hurling Final in Croke Park. Nervous? You betcha. It hard to escape the feeling that this is the most important match in Tipperary hurling in a generation. For one of the most talented cohorts of hurlers we have produced it is likely to define their playing careers. Nine years on since Brendan Maher lifted the Irish Press cup, with the last of the Cummins/Kelly/Corbett era gone and in their prime athletic years: their time is now. And naturally it's Kilkenny who stand opposite, the team who have ended their hopes in five of the last seven championships.
Assessing the true worth of Tipp's performances this year is a difficult task. They were essentially untested in Munster. The compass pointed in all directions after the semi-final win over Galway. Depending on the sunniness of your disposition you could see echoes of the 2010 win over Galway: character and composure overcoming self-inflicted handicaps, or the 2011 win over Dublin: comfortable early going belying poverty of attacking approach and a sweaty stumble over the finish line.
In truth there were elements of both. The jitters recurred all through: the two Galway goals were largely self-inflicted, while for Shane Maloney's final point Tipp players fumbled in possession twice in the build up. We swapped early midfield dominance for complete subjugation before a few key contributions in the endgame. Our attack completely lost their way for long periods. Yet at other times they hurled with a sublime artistry. The seven points we scored in response to Galway's opening goal was as good as we've hurled all year; yet we failed to score for sixteen minutes after that. The two goals in the closing stages were stunning, yet we failed to add even a single point in the closing stages.
Where then lies the true worth of this team? The reconsituted defence looks in great shape. James Barry has emerged as a quiet star at full back. It's a strange turn for a player dismissed by many as too loose for top level hurling; he really revels in the close quarter combat at the edge of the square. Having Michael Cahill back fully fit and on form is a massive boost. Cathal Barrett struggled the last day but has probably been Tipp's best player over the year. Seamus Kennedy has done well at right half back, while swapping the Mahers has allowed Padraig to return to his best position and play with the freedom which makes him most effective.
The league showed the defence to be vulnerable to goals created by direct running down the middle. The Galway game suggested that that problem had not entirely gone away, however self-inflicted the scenarios. There was a noticable improvement in the second half with our half forwards and midfield noticably deep from Galway puckouts in particular, leaving very little space to run into. If that effort is replicated for the entirety of the final we will be hard to break down. That security has a necessary cost to our attack however. Sunday will tell if the balance is right. In particular Dan McCormack has brought extra ball winning to the forwards, and both he and Bonnar were evidently excellent against Galway. Their ability to come deep and win possession was vital for our foothold in the game.
Of course the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Neither player is the sweetest striker in the world, and the kind of diagonal deliveries from deep that Gearoid Ryan provided in 2010 or Walter Walsh gave Kilkenny against Waterford in the replay were not too much a feature of our play. Instead both players are more likely to carry the ball, which was effective against Galway but likely a hard road to travel against Kilkenny. Noel still can seem like a player born in the wrong era but he remains a luxury we can't live without to tip the scales back towards scoring. He seems ill suited to keeping Padraig Walsh quiet; could a swap with Bonner yield dividends here?
When it comes to going from back to front the delivery of ball from half back likewise was not always where you might want it against Galway either. High balls to the edge of the square were an effective tactic in the Munster final but less so the less day. Callinan's tenure as a centre-forward effectively ended because for a big man, standing under the dropping ball is just no his game. The genesis of his current full forward role was in the point he scored as a sub in the 2010 final after skinning the defence with a right-to-left run. Since then he has terrorised defences with his lateral movement; I'm not sure there is a forward playing today who makes better and harder runs off the ball. When Callinan returned in the league, his touch was a work in progress, but his runs had a visible and immediate effect in opening up the attack for players around him. It's an utter waste of his talents to have him parked under high balls, instead of employing him at what he excels at.
That said, high balls may bear a dividend if used in the right way. Clare game-planned Kilkenny to perfection in the league by working the ball to a wingforwardish position before launching their bombs. The chaos that ensued created the platform for victory that day. So effective was it that it's strange that no-one has tried it since. It could be a useful adjunct to our attacking play - rather than the main plank of our attack - if used sparingly on Sunday. All the evidence likewise suggests that John McGrath is the man to be under it. He has had a terrific first full championship, and a badly needed addition of a specialist forward. It's strange for county that has such a rich tradition of them but we've struggled for out-and-out corner forwards in recent times. Maybe they are an endangered species in general in the era of rotating forwards but natural scorers never go out of fashion. Niall O'Meara played better than I thought against Galway on re-examination and his facility to break ball in dangerous areas has been useful but he struggles to get in the game at times. The nod for Bubbles is no surprise on that basis. He may not be a natural corner forward either but he sure can score.
It's hard to talk about scoring without mentioning Michael Breen, who has been torching the scoreboard so far. His physical edge is also something to behold, though he and Brendan Maher struggled to impose themselves for a long period the last day. Brendan in particular stayed has been staying close to his defence to good effect and made several telling contributions in the closing stages the last day. With his notional marker the dominant David Burke doing likewise it demonstrates how the use of midfielders continues to evolve. Between keeping tabs on Richie Hogan and any other drifting forwards, contributing on the scoreboard and helping out in defence they will have their hands full, the gift of Michael Fennelly's absence notwithstanding.
With regard to Kilkenny, they continue to demonstrate remarkable facility for getting it done Sunday after Sunday. They looked cooked against Waterford the first day in particular, but they just hurled away for the seventy while Waterford collapsed in a heap around them. They have not demonstrated the same goalscoring facility as previous seasons but there were signs of life the last day. Without Fennelly to expertly knit together the attack as he did the last day though it might be harder going. Perhaps Kevin Kelly will become the latest Cody selection flyer to pay off on the big day; we can cast our minds back to the spring if we're having trouble placing him. They remain formidable.
Much will ultimately lie on whever Michael Ryan's philosophical makeover has been real. He has been impressive so far in his poise and equanamity. As everyone is well aware now we tend to do well in the classics, but are supposedly incapable of stooping to ugliness when required. It feels like we will have to go to war if we want to win this one. There may be a tide in the affairs of men, but so too sports teams. This Tipp team may have a young core but if feels like a pivotal moment is required; after a few years on the wrong end of black and amber, and act of resistence is sorely needed. If we can knit this to the killer instincts we showed against Galway in the closing stages, we won't be far off. If we can it will make it one of the sweetest of all.
14/8/15
For six consecutive seasons since 2009 Tipperary have concluded their hurling championship with a meeting against Kilkenny. It has been an unprecedented and largely unhappy run; Sunday's meeting against Galway presents the opportunity to add a seventh bead to the string. With the team now firmly in the ownership of the core of the 2010 U-21 winning side, what can be said for our chances of reaching another final in Eamon O'Shea's last year in charge?
It has been a curious summer. Given our recent habituation to qualifier-fuelled meanders and Munster preliminary rounds it has been a strange sensation to be the last team in the entirety of both championships to see action and to have but a single outing since. On the face of it it adds up to a relative paucity of evidence to divine progress from. Yet there has been enough to suggest that some vital lessons has been learned from the failure last September.
The frustrations were myriad after the replay defeat. The sense that after all the fireworks the first day we had sleepwalked into it was hard to escape. We failed to show Kilkenny - a team which has been proven to be the best adaptive machine since the T-1000 - anything different. We looked utterly befuddled when Kilkenny changed the rules of combat and packed their half of the field, getting bogged down in attack and clueless as to how to fill the swathes of space their short-handed attack took full advantage of on our own patch.
The damning part of it was that our lack of defensive organisation was a clear problem from the earliest stages of 2014. The league was a catalogue of defensive fiascos: blowing a glorious chance for a precious win in Nowlan Park by conceding five goals; leaving a chasm of space in front of Paddy Stapleton as Conor McGrath ran riot against Clare; leaving Stapleton again to be brutalised by Jonathan Glynn against Galway; and conceding an eyewatering 19 goals in 8 matches in the league in total. Then there was the rotating cast of full backs, including Tom Stapleton, Paddy Stapleton, Conor O'Mahony, Padraig Maher and finally - in desperation - James Barry. We had the short lived Brendan Maher as holding centre back experiment. By the time we reached the All Ireland Final we had lucked into something approaching a functioning defence, but still conceded enough not to win a match in which we scored 1-28, and conceded 2-17 in the replay against an attack which frequently consisted of five and even four players.
The first signs that 2015 might lead somewhere different came back in October with the appointment of Declan Fanning as a selector. A blunt critic of the way we set our backline up at times last year, he would surely help to bring some organisational focus which appeared to have been sorely lacking in 2014. Apart from a messy performance down in Cork the league was largely promising despite various injuries making it hard to put the same team out week on week. The deployment of Brendan Maher at centre forward was an indicator that we were starting to think of defence in its totality rather than focusing on just 1-7. The sudden retirement and addition of Paul Curran to the backroom team was another welcome injection of defensive know-how. Add the continued development of Cathal Barrett and the emergence of Ronan Maher and Michael Breen and the sense of clear purpose heading into the championship was stark compared to last year.
To translate that purpose into such a coherent performance against Limerick then was all the more pleasing. It can be acknowledged that Limerick's performance was a long way short of what they have produced against Tipp in recent years. Nonetheless, while the attack merely proved how they can dazzle on any day when they are allowed to play exactly as they wish, the defensive effort stood out for its unity. The role of Padraig Maher was especially interesting: for a player who has been criticised for his tendency to wander far from his supposed station when playing centre back, he played with a positional discipline which was very obvious. It was clear too that Tipp were willing to live with the threat of Declan Hannon taking the occasional long range score as a trade off for keeping Maher close to the full back line.
A subtle but important illustration of the Tipp mentality was given when Maher jogged to take a position up beside Darren Gleeson for a Limerick attacking line ball in the first half. It was from just such a situation that Richie Power pirouetted through our backline in the replayed 2014 final for a killer goal; an indication that we wouldn't be found wanting on the small details this time. Brendan Maher frequently dropped into the space his centre back vacated throughout and was complimented by James Woodlock who also frequently took up a protective position in front of the back line. When Graham Mulcahy beat his man and cut in along the endline in the first half, Padraig Maher arrived immediately when the play broke down as Kieran Bergin on the cover coursed Mulcahy away from goal. He was able to find Brendan Maher offering an outlet from a defensive position between his own '45 and '65, who immediately made the clearance which led to Callinan's second goal. A perfect illustration of our defence and notional attackers working in concert.
The Waterford game brought a different kind of challenge. It was well flagged in advance that Tipp would not be allowed to play they way that they would like against a Waterford team featuring a much publicised seven-man defence. Playing against this kind of system requires discipline in defence and patience in attack, with good use of the ball at both ends. Apart from a few high-profile Padraig Maher errors in the first half - commited as we now know while playing through injury - we dealt with Waterford's limited attacking resources with some comfort. In attack it was more of a mixed bag; patient at times, at other times we lost our way, the deliveries from defence in the second half were often too long when there was more space outside, while Callinan was guilty of shooting from poor positions when swinging the ball into the space vacated by the attendant sweeper might have borne more dividends.
Nonetheless, aided by the switch of Bubbles Dwyer to wing forward, we closed out the game with a degree of comfort. The other key move was sending Brendan Maher on fire fighting duty back on Kevin Moran. It both showed our new found tactical flexibility and what a peerless player Brendan is in the way that he can be used in numerous different roles. Former NBA coaches Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy had a discussion while commentating on the NBA finals on the difficulty of getting players to truly be selfless in pursuit of winning. Summarised, the message was that all players want to win; the problem is is that most of them only want to win on their own terms. Getting players to believe in the team and sacrifice themselves for the team is probably the hardest job for a manager. Having a captain who seems to do that every day he goes out must be a tremendous asset for Eamon O'Shea.
With Kilkenny having played both Waterford and Galway, where then would we benchmark Galway? In truth despite the positive noises coming out of Galway afterwards I thought their Leinster Final performance was disappointing. They have some nice young scoring forwards in Mannion and Flynn, while Joe Canning's goal was yet another glimpse of what might be if he could only harness that amazing talent on a more consistent basis. In general though they played without much discipline and they conceded numerous needless frees (a disease we are well familiar with). Iarla Tannion's performance was emblematic in that he played with an anachronistic abandon which is ill suited to a game where possession has become something to be treasured jealously.
They will have likely learned little more from Cork, who were wretched. Nonetheless it showcased their scoring ability and their size and strength. Their aggression can certainly trouble us if it's tempered by a little cuteness, and we have bad history with Jonathan Glynn who was a wrecking ball against Cork and looks much more effective now that they've stopped trying to make a Big Full Forward out of him. On the Tipp side Padraig Maher's shoulder has to be a concern given the key role he is fulfilling. It must be hoped that our new-found organisation can mitigate the other injury concerns we have in defence and ensure a coherent unit regardless of who lines out where. The return of Noel McGrath is a big boost if he's anywhere near fitness as our bench in attack has looked a bit threadbare. If we do the things that have taken us here we should win, but there is enough in the memory for some trepidation: 2000; 2005; the near disaster in 2010; and last year when we were on our way out until we weren't. Kilkenny await, yet again. It would be a shame to disappoint them.
