Tipperary paying a huge price for their 2019 All-Ireland win
Poor planning at root of Premier’s decline
ICAN’T help feeling that we are in the middle of another Munster hurling revolution. Of all the years I have been involved in this game, the 1990s was the decade that stood out as the one where anything seemed possible.
I often feel blessed that I was bang in the middle of that with a fine Limerick team of which I am still extremely proud — even if you won’t find many photographs hanging on pub walls of the team that reached the 1994 and ’96 AllIreland finals.
Ultimately, those walls of dubious fame are reserved for winners only, but they played their part in that decade when Clare, Wexford and, at the latter end, even Waterford started to rumble.
I remember being interviewed after we beat Cork in the 1994 Championship by a very excitable individual who wondered how big an opportunity the summer represented with Cork and Tipperary having exited the competition.
There was something about the framing of the question that niggled me — it was almost as if
Cork’s departure from the Championship was entirely down to themselves and we just happened to be the idle bystanders who were fortunate enough to be present.
I simply replied: ‘Whatever opportunity exists is the one we created by beating them rather than they handing it to us and by the way, Cork and Tipperary are no charities so we won’t be going around feeling sorry for them.’
That truth did not go down well among some ultra-sensitive Cork and Tipperary souls, but the teams that emerged during that decade — and perhaps it was never better articulated than in Anthony Daly’s iconic ‘no longer the whipping boys’ speech — were doing it for themselves.
And they would not have been able to do that if they had busied themselves doffing their caps to their supposed superiors.
This feels a lot like back then, but if anything the revolution appears even more ruthless.
Tipperary come to Limerick tomorrow facing up to the reality that their season will be over even before the June Bank Holiday weekend.
In fact, I would argue it was over by the Easter weekend because once they lost to Waterford, their race was run.
What is puzzling about the fall and fall of Munster’s two superpowers is that they are still producing young talent, still winning titles at underage level but yet seem incapable of developing that talent and bringing it forward.
I have wearied myself about the folly of Cork’s dysfunctional game plan, which was in evidence once more last week, so I’ll leave the Rebels alone for now.
However, Tipperary’s decline is very much rooted in a cocktail of ego, loyalty and poor planning.
The obvious way to measure any manager’s success is by counting out what he has won, which is fair enough but not only does that chime with a certain shallowness, relentlessly chasing success can lead to long-term damage.
Sometimes winning an All-Ireland can cover up underlying cracks which, when left unattended, can often bring the whole house crashing down.
In that sense, Tipperary’s 2019 All-Ireland win might just have been one of the most expensive in their history.
There were fears that season that Liam Sheedy’s loyalty to the core group that won him the 2010 Liam MacCarthy Cup would cost him. However, in claiming that All-Ireland, he could rightly say that he proved everyone wrong.
Okay — and I trust this does not come across as being begrudging — but the reason Tipperary won that All-Ireland was down to Limerick not being in the final.
And had that been the case, perhaps Tipperary would be in a better place today.
Instead, that victory only delayed what needed to happen, which was for some of the older players to be moved on and the blooding of younger players.
But the desire to wring more out of proven course-and-distance winners was a bigger priority than building to be competitive on a longer term basis.
We keep hearing now about how teams are in transition as if it is a modern phenomenon, but bringing players in and moving players on is nothing new, it is part of the natural rhythm of a healthy team environment.
I am not tooting my own horn here, but on average in my time in charge of Limerick, I handed out four debuts every season.
And there were times when perhaps it could have been easier to put that on the long finger, but introducing new players — if you want to be fair in giving those individuals a genuine chance — works best when they are coming into a team that is going well.
Transition has now got a bad name because it is used as an excuse to explain away a losing season. ‘Ah sure, we are a team in transition,’ we keep hearing.
It certainly sounds a lot better than saying: ‘Ah sure, we are a team in chaos.’
Now, which phrase do you think fits Tipperary better? Answers on a postcard and all that jazz.
And I am not pointing the finger at Colm Bonnar. He was left with an impossible job, one which — as astute a judge and as proud a Tipperary man as he is — Liam Cahill turned down.
Cahill did not want to become the next Mickey Ned O’Sullivan or Denis Ogie Moran, the men who finally picked up the baton from Mick O’Dwyer in Kerry football.
For all he achieved — and outside of the eight All-Irelands he won with the Kingdom, he lit fires elsewhere — Micko’s big failure was to keep squeezing the same orange until it was all out of juice.
He is not the first to do that and, as Sheedy has shown, nor will he be the last.
But that is a core failure of management, because where you leave a team is every bit as important as where you took them at their peak.
“Success can
often cover up the cracks”