WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN...
Tipp have failed to build on their quarter-final success four years ago but they remain hopeful they can turn it around
‘Production line has been spluttering for some time’ ‘The boys that came out of that team were leaders’
THE old line of being wary of the company you keep for it is a reflection of who you are should make for uncomfortable reading for Tipperary football folk right now.
Not like four years ago today, when it was the company they were putting manners on that made the whole GAA world stand up and take notice.
On an unforgettable afternoon in Croke Park, they blitzed Galway to win by nine points and book their place against Mayo in the All-Ireland semi-final — their first appearance in the last four in 81 years.
Four years on and their immediate challenge is sourced in the west, but these days it is lovely but lowly Leitrim who occupy their thoughts and not Connacht’s Old Firm.
With two rounds of the Allianz football league remaining when the inter-county shutters roll back up in mid-October, Tipperary find themselves shackled to Leitrim on just three points in what is a battle to avoid — Louth’s fate already as good as decided – relegation to the game’s lowest tier.
In short, like some perverse game of bingo, they are trying to avoid all the fours, going from the last four to Division Four, all inside four years. How did it come to this? The truth is that there are no easy or obvious answers.
By the normal inter-county transition rates, there has been relative little leakage.
Only, you have guessed it, four of the team who started in that win over Galway will not be available to David Power this winter – Ciaran McDonald, George Hannigan (both retired) Peter Acheson (Dubai) and Josh Keane, who has opted out for this season.
However, what Tipperary may have gained in quantity, they have lost in quality.
McDonald was perhaps the most under-rated man-marker in the game, his quality such that he represented Ireland at International Rules level, but that semifinal against Mayo would be his final game.
He was only 28 when he made the call, but a persistent hip injury meant that he had to go just as his team was set to peak.
That loss was doubled by the departure of Acheson, who relocated to Dubai in the aftermath of the 2016 Championship, although he made perhaps the most extravagant and extreme commute in playing for Moyle Rovers in the 2018 Tipperary championship.
A powerful, athletic presence, he set the tempo in the middle of the field in that run to the semi-final and, at 26, had he stayed around, Tipperary would have benefited.
Neither have been replaced but then the production line that whirred in the early half of this decade has been spluttering for some time. The senior team that Liam Kearns inherited when he took over from Peter Creedon had been built of the back of a few successful underage teams.
McDonald, Acheson, Robbie Kiely and Conor Sweeney were all members of John Evans’ team that won a first Munster Under 21 championship in 2010.
Twelve months later a first AllIreland minor title followed, which produced Evan Comerford, Bill Maher, Liam McGrath, Colin O’Riordan, Stephen O’Brien and Quinlivan, while Jimmy Feehan was on the team that regained the Munster minor title the following year.
Add in Colm O’Shaughnessy, Kevin O’Halloran and Josh Keane who were part of the under-21 team that would come up a point shy of Tyrone in the 2015 All-Ireland final, and in essence it could be argued that an entire senior team was built off three underage teams. That is rare but when the tap stopped — and while they did get to the All-Ireland minor final also in 2015, the 20-point hammering dished out by Kerry was the beginning of the end of their underage success – they struggled to replenish.
It is all very well holding on to the core of the team, but it also needed to be infused with highend talent and that really has not happened.
‘The reality is you are not going to be in a position where you can produce that kind of talent year in, year out, but I think we made the most out of those teams,’ argues Hannigan, who hung up his inter-county boots at the end of 2018.
‘And the thing is that what those teams won at underage level was a huge thing in itself. We had never won a Munster under-21 title until 2010 and just the thrill of that achievement in itself was a huge thing for Tipperary football.
‘The boys that came out of that team were leaders really and when you look at what followed with the minors, I don’t think it could be said that as a county we did not get the most out of them,’ adds Hannigan.
When Tipperary beat Galway in that quarter-final, there was giddy talk of the county being a genuine dual one, and even claims that within a decade they could bring back the Sam Maguire.
However, tradition and mindsets do not budge on the evidence of a couple of good seasons.
Stephen O’Brien, their principal midfielder, opted for a fringe role with the hurlers for a couple of seasons, while Seamus Kennedy went for good. John McGrath’s head was always going to be turned by the hurlers, but he was also a member of that 2011 All-Ireland minor winning team.
Hurling remains number one, which might have made the decision for the excellent O’Riordan a little easier to pursue a professional career.
Had McDonald’s body held up, Acheson and O’Riordan stayed put, and O’Brien and Kennedy remained with the footballers, where would Tipperary football be today?
There is no definite answer to that, other than they would not be reduced to a dance-off with Leitrim.
Since that win over Galway, Tipperary have won just two out of 10 Championship games, against Waterford and Cavan.
Perhaps it is not quite as grim as that stat suggests.
Indeed, the following season they were going well, had secured promotion from Division 3 when they got sucker-punched by a last-gasp Luke Connolly goal in the 2017 Munster semi-final.
After waiting 72 years to beat Cork in 2006, a second win inside 12 months would have reaffirmed Tipperary as Kerry’s main contenders.
‘That result was a sickening blow because we went into that game against Cork with a lot of injuries and to lose it like that was hard but I am not sure it was the beginning of the end,’ suggests Hannigan.
‘We played Armagh after that in the qualifiers in what was a great
game that we were in all the way but Jamie Clarke popped up and scored a goal.
‘Even the following year, we were in with a great shout against Mayo, leading in the final quarter until they got a fortuitous goal, but it is not as if we went away.’
Still the future looks uncertain and a knockout Championship, even if they are on the opposite side to Kerry and Cork, is unlikely to offer much comfort as they eye up Clare in the first round.
‘Winning Munster would be the goal but that’s easier said than done when you have Kerry always there and Cork coming again.
‘I would still be hopeful that is with the capability of the group and this would be as good as any year for it to happen.’