Kearns keen for Premier to make most of opportunity

TIPPERARY manager Liam Kearns might well be a Kerry native but he is outnumbered in his own family.

His wife is from Garrykennedy, just out side of Nenagh, while one of his daughters who gave birth to his first grandchild on the same day Tipperary defeated Cork in the Munster semi-final, lives in Ballina-Killaloe and the blue and gold jersey is already secured for the big match this Sunday.

However, it is not the first time he will look to plot the downfall of his native county in search of a first Munster title as a senior inter-county manager. Between 2000 and 2005 he was in charge of the Limerick senior footballers who almost made the breakthrough in the province.

Particularly from 2003 onwards when Limerick defeated Cork to get through to a Munster final, but in 2003 through to 2005, Kerry proved to be too big a nut to crack, despite coming oh so close in 2004 in particular.

“In the first Munster Final they were too good for us,” Kearns began of the experience he can take from his time with Limerick to help Tipperary, not only on Sunday but in the coming years.

“We learnt from that and came back again and got to play them in the next two or three we knew we could compete. You have got to start competing with them first, and we came up short a few times bridging the gap from four or five points down to a point or two and we drew with them, then led them seven points in Killarney in the replay.”

Kearns says there are many similarities between the bunch of players he had during his time with Limerick and now with Tipperary, but the difference has been that reaching a Munster Final has come a lot sooner than he expected with the Premier County.

“There were some good leaders in the my dressing room in Limerick and there are some good leaders in my dressing room in Tipperary. They go out and don’t just talk the talk, they walk the walk.

“We have leaders in nearly every line, Ciaran McDonald in the full-back line, Alan Campbell is getting there, he is going to be a leader. Into the half-back line, Robbie Kiely is a leader; Bill Maher has only come in but he doesn’t shy away from responsibility.

“Peter Acheson is obviously a leader, George Hannigan is a leader, Michael Quinlivan is going to be a leader as well, Brian Fox, they are all strong solid characters.

“These boys have gotten to a Munster Final ahead of time. The long term goals coming into this was promotion to Division 2, beat one of the top two teams in Munster, get to a Munster final and obviously winning a Munster Final. We’ve achieved two of them already, we nearly achieved a third as well.

“We’ll have to look at the long term goals again after this year but they are ahead of schedule in what they have done this year and in the circumstances, I think that is the most pleasing thing for that group and for the management, having lost so many players we still have come up to the standard we have come up to and are still in a Munster final.”

However, whatever happens in this Sunday’s provincial final, Tipperary’s first in fourteen years at senior level, Kearns is adamant that his adopted county don’t slip back into the doldrums for similar period of time.

“Whatever happens on Sunday we have got to get back to a Munster Final next year or the year after,” he stressed.

“It can’t be fourteen years before you get back to another Munster Final again because you are just not making progress if that is the case. Then you can start to say that you are not going away and are consistently there.

“As Darragh Ó Sé said, you don’t want then getting notions about yourself. That’s the reality, if they beat us well on Sunday and we don’t come back to a Munster Final for another ten or fifteen years, that is what they have done.

“That was my perspective with Limerick, the more times we got back to a Munster Final the better and the more competitive we got. What broke us is that we never made the breakthrough.”

Sunday’s opponents Kerry proved to the nut they couldn’t crack in the province and as he plots their downfall once again he points to their high standards as to why they remain so successful.

“That’s the one thing about Kerry and Dublin, they bring a standard and produce it no matter who they are playing. If you want to take them on you are going to have to go up to meet them. That is the difference between the top teams and the rest.”