Sheedy can't lean on history as he navigates new terrain

LAST month, when he met the national media on the formal unveiling of his second coming as Tipperary manager, Liam Sheedy grabbed his comfort blanket.

Quizzed as to the pressure that comes with sitting in one of the most demanding dug-outs in the game, Sheedy wrapped it around him as if it was bullet proof.

‘To be honest with you, I am in a privileged position of having been an All-Ireland-winning manager so that’s certainly that box ticked,’ he ventured.

Except that’s not how this game works, especially not in Tipperary, where history hangs heavy.

The last Tipperary All-Irelandwinning manager who came back a second time to restore lost glories will testify to that.

Michael ‘Babs’ Keating might as well have been told not to let the door hit him on the way out, when his second three-year stint as Premier County boss ended in 2007 with a defeat to Wexford.

There is no suggestion that Sheedy’s return, which invited a bout of giddiness, is on the same path with Tipperary perspective extending far beyond a threegame Allianz League losing streak, but it should serve as a reminder that eaten bread is soon forgotten.

And right now their support base is hungry bunch for a reason.

Taking last year’s Allianz League final defeat to Kilkenny as a starting point, Tipperary have won just one out of their last nine competitive games.

And if they fail to beat Cork on Sunday — and even a win guarantees nothing — they will fail to qualify out of back-to-back leagues where, numerically, in terms of the number of play-offs places, it should have been easier to qualify than miss-out.

That won’t help the anxiety levels in Tipperary, where failure to take one of three All-Ireland series berths in Munster later this summer is something too dark to even comprehend.

Not that Sheedy will be fazed; certainly not this week as he feels the sun in his bones as Tipp headed for a five-day warm weather camp in Spain.

Their Cork opponents, with a board currently mired in debt, can only look on enviously but Sheedy not only expects and demands the best, he also helps deliver it.

Without him at the helm, it is unlikely that Declan Kelly, his fellow Portroe native and successful businessman, would not have come on board as a backer or agreed to head up the commercial board designed to attract funds to ensure that team preparations will be right at the cutting edge.

Critics may argue that it is one thing making things look good on the balance sheet, but hurling games are won on grass.

Sheedy’s gift is that, with a professional background in high end banking, and a lifetime in hurling, he knows one can complement the other.

True, there is no evidence of that yet but circumstances have not been kind this spring.

He was unfortunate to have his best laid plans hindered by an injury crisis — at one stage last month he lamented that 14 of his 40-man panel was unavailable.

While he has openly admitted that one of the primary reasons he returned after an eight-year absence was a desire to reunite with the handful of remaining players from his All-Ireland win in 2010 — Noel McGrath, Seamus Callanan and the Mahers, Padraic, Patrick and Brendan are all that remain — he knows that if the team is to move forward again it has to be driven by new blood.

To be fair, that has been the approach which has guided him in his four games to date, in which he has used 28 players.

That number would have been higher had the likes of Colin English, Jerome Cahill and Dylan Quirke — all members of last year’s All-Ireland-winning Under 21s not been injured, while Mark Kehoe and Killian O’Dwyer’s Fitzgibbon Cup commitments with UCC meant he was unable to give them the amount of game-time he would have liked.

In that sense, it is more likely that he will be more frustrated than concerned with how the opening weeks of his second coming has rolled.

And this spring has not been all bad; two of his three defeats have been by a single point — to Wexford and Kilkenny — which if it flipped the other way would have left Tipp sitting pretty.

And despite a losing record this spring, their defence has conceded less than anyone else.

The return of James Barry to full-back has added solidity, and when Brendan Maher returns, his impact is likely to be instant.

It is not, though, as if there has been no evidence of cobwebs after eight years spent away from the training field — although he helped out in a consultancy role with both Offaly and Antrim.

The Tipperary attack has lacked fluency this spring, perhaps because Sheedy has been inclined to play a direct game-plan that is now out of step with the game’s possession-based blueprint.

That might explain why he has brought back his former coach Eamonn O’Shea into the fold, in a bid to ensure that they will play more through the lines as the season progresses. Most importantly of all, it is Sheedy’s nature to reach for the top.

His role as chair of hurling’s 2020 committee prompted him to apply for the role of the GAA’s Director General and he took that race all the way to the line.

Chances are though, given a choice, he would happily sacrifice that opportunity to be back on top where it matters most.