RELIGHT A FIRE THAT IS FADING
After a blistering start to his Premier County reign, the challenge now is to...
FUNNY how teams can sometimes appear like an extension of a manager’s character. Kilkenny under Brian Cody seem to share a ruthless streak, an unsentimental attachment to winning that has run like a seam throughout a golden era of success. Where talent is never enough, unless it is matched by an unflinching work rate.
Or take Waterford, where the patterns and systems and ability to test the limits of hurling orthodoxy appear to be a reflection of Derek McGrath’s analytical mind and capacity to see the field as a blank canvas.
When Michael Ryan took over Tipperary for the 2016 season, he quickly imposed his own vision on the squad. He was part of Liam Sheedy’s management team in 2010 that won an All-Ireland with a mix of fire and cerebral inter-play that owed a debt to the creative mind of coach Eamon O’Shea.
Ryan, though, went about putting his own stamp on things when he took charge by bringing it back, in a sense, to brass tacks.
When Tipperary met Waterford in the 2016 Munster final, unlike the previous year when they edged a dour, tactical stalemate 0-21 to 0-16, mirroring their opponents to an extent and ending up caught up in the web of their opponents’ sweeper system, they went for the jugular from the off and rattled in five goals, winning 5-19 to 0-13.
The subsequent All-Ireland final dismantling of Kilkenny read like an emphatic celebration after the years of defeats at the same hands. As a player, Ryan was all-in, bringing that same mix of commitment and earthy confidence to his sideline role.
On the All-Star tour of Singapore last November, he wore number 16 for the exhibition match in the exotic setting of ‘The Padang’ in the middle of the thriving city and it’s easy to see him as Tipperary’s 16th man.
Part of their match-day warm-up has included a drill where the team management, including Ryan, fire the sliotar by hand at the players running out in straight lines, and take the return before firing it at the next player.
Maintaining that earthy connection to those on the field looks unforced and natural for someone who gives a sense that he would love to be back out there himself, the passion for the game undimmed.
Jim McGuinness also had that same direct hand in certain drills on match-day during his All-Ireland winning tenure with Donegal.
What’s hard to figure out is why, the longer Ryan has been in charge, the team has come to revert to type rather than his original vision: maddeningly moody and inconsistent while equally capable of producing breathless passages of hurling.
Tipperary head to the Gaelic Grounds on Sunday for the first round of the novel round-robin Munster SHC not knowing which team will turn up: a version of the all-singing, all-dancing side that stuck 2-29 past Kilkenny in the 2016 final and looked the best side in Ireland bar none in the spring of 2017, or the version that bombed by 16 points in the Allianz League final that year against Galway and didn’t show up for large portions of this year’s final against a youthful Kilkenny.
‘The League final defeat by Galway hurt us badly. The timing was awful… taking a defeat like that so close to the Championship. The manner of defeat was a complete systems failure for us.’
That was Ryan after the 2017 League final while, following defeat last month, he explained: ‘We didn’t get to the level, we simply didn’t get to the level and I was concerned from the off.
‘This was not what we wanted to bring to Kilkenny. Any part of the first half I wouldn’t have been happy with either.
‘I just thought we were a little bit slow, a little bit lethargic and you can’t come down and expect to get a result with that kind of performance, it has to be of the highest level.
‘It doesn’t get easier by the way; we were well and truly beaten in that second half. We were in good shape for the first half. I wasn’t happy with how we were playing even at that.
‘I just felt we were within ourselves and we weren’t showing enough urgency to face what I knew was going to come which was a Kilkenny attack. They had all the intensity, we didn’t.’
With Noel McGrath, Patrick ‘Bonner’ Maher and Seamus Callanan all coming back in to the mix, there is a sense that the group format of the new Munster Championship will suit a team of Tipperary’s obvious quality and strength in depth, that they won’t just pay the price for an off-day
like the League final that is clearly such a source of frustration for Ryan.
But, dark horses for Munster, Limerick will certainly test their nerve, the League semi-final meeting a thrilling, end-to-end affair that needed extra time before Tipperary squeezed through by a goal.
Unlike Kilkenny under Cody, Tipperary have never carried that fear-factor for other teams, a point Ryan conceded in an interview on tour last November, even in the wake of that emphatic 2016 success.
‘When we beat Kilkenny in 2016 I thought it was almost a watershed moment… we all took a lot of confidence from that. These boys had been the standard bearers for many years. One swallow doesn’t make a summer but I got a feeling that it would do a lot for other teams. Teams didn’t look at us as they would have looked at Kilkenny.’
Sunday is about changing perceptions once more.