38 Fitz: We need to keep Tipping on

KILKENNY v CLARE Walsh to miss final with groin injury but keen to return soon

PAUL FITZGERALD says that it’s time for Tipperary to “draw a line” through the historic 2020 Munster football success.

Since winning that first provincial title in 85 years, Tipperary football has gone through quite a period of transition and are now firmly a Division Four team again having failed to mount a promotion charge this year after their relegation last year.

There was already significant player turnover prior to this year but manager Paul Kelly introduced 16 new players for this season alone, with very few survivors remaining from 2020.

A long-serving goalkeeper who was then part of the management team when Tipp reached the All-Ireland semifinal in 2016, Fitzgerald

is now back as a selector under Kelly.

He said: “You have to draw a line through the past. It was great and 2020 was great for everybody, but you have to move and you can’t take your eye off the ball with regards development from the ground up.

“Get lads in, get them on board, get them focused, and get them on the bus, and then take it from there.You can’t be looking back all the time and you can’t be using who we are missing as excuses.

Drive

“When you are missing key players, it is not easy. You just need them all on board and just drive all those new guys that are on the squad.”

Tipperary play Waterford in the Munster quarter-final on Sunday with the winners to play Clare, when a place in the All-Ireland series will be up for grabs.

“We’ve a game against Waterford that we have total focus on. Win that and we have a Munster semi-final against Clare.

“Who knows what could happen that way?”

WALTER WALSH has revealed that he is set to miss the first couple of rounds of Kilkenny’s Championship campaign as he recovers from a groin injury.

Walsh suffered the injury in February’s League win over Offaly and is around halfway through the recovery period of at least 10 weeks.

It obviously rules him out of Saturday’s League final against Clare.

Kilkenny open their Leinster Championship campaign at home to Antrim on April 21 followed by a trip to Galway the following weekend.

They then have a fortnight break before the short trip to Carlow.

Speaking at the launch of the Leinster Championships at Collins Barracks in Dublin yesterday, he explained: “It’s just taking a bit of time, just a bit of separation from the bone.

“I’m lucky I didn’t need an operation on it really, just where it is on the top of the groin.

“So, hopefully I’ll be back in four or five weeks.

“It was rest for the first couple of weeks and then I’ve been doing rehab the last few weeks. I went to see a specialist, realised I didn’t need an operation.

“And sure that could be four or five months, that could be the season gone. You don’t know after that how well you are going to respond to it either. So, yeah, I’ll take the 10 or 12 weeks it is, definitely.

“After the Galway game there is a two-week break before the

IN THE FRAME: Walter Walsh of Kilkenny, who is keen to get back in action after his injury, poses for a portrait at the ‘GAA; People, Objects & Stories’ exhibition during the launch of the 2024 Leinster GAA Senior Hurling Championship in the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin

Carlow game, that would bring me up to 10 or 11 weeks but, again, it’s all down to seeing how the rehab goes.”

Now 32, Walsh has endured more than his fair share of injury problems in recent years though he laughed off suggestions that the advancing years may be a factor.

Frustrating

“Last year as well I picked up an eight-week injury around the end of the League as well, the year before I did as well. So it is frustrating because you are hoping to play the League.

“The way the last two years have transpired I was just coming back towards the end of the round robin so I haven’t got a clean run at it as well, the same happened this year but it just happened a bit earlier, the injury.

“It is unfortunate, 2022 was my groin, last year my hamstring and back to my other groin now. But look, there are players who have got far worse injuries as well.”

On Saturday, Kilkenny bid for their first outright League title since 2018 having shared it with Tipperary during the Covid-disrupted 2021 season.

“There are a lot of players on our team who haven’t got a National League medal,” Walsh noted.“It’s a national final so it’s massive.You want to win it.

“‘Only the league’ is kind of talked about but these are all games that teams are trying to win.

“You can look at it any way you want but you want to win every game you go out to play. No