SURVIVAL MODE
Defeat by Clare will bring an early end to Tipperary’s Championship and, after two nervy draws, the peril of their situation has to bring out a winning focus
THE headline in the Tipperary Star came doused in the angst now unsettling the county. ‘Michael Ryan’s Tipperary hurlers are on the brink and need your support against Clare’, it ran. They need what help they can get, and a crowd exceeding the 10,000 that watched last Sunday’s remarkable game with Waterford would help. Ryan’s team will take any assistance going.
Batman hasn’t faced as many days of destiny as the Tipperary hurlers. The past three Sundays have all been sold as decisive junctures in the summer of a hurling superpower that has spent two years wobbling uncertainly.
Defeat to Limerick on May 20 was deemed to have pitched them into crisis. Falling nine points behind in the first half against Cork a week later had Ger Loughnane leaving them to the past tense. And a Waterford frenzy left them 11 points down with 15 minutes to play seven days ago.
The new hurling format has attracted praise for the drama it has invested in the early summer, but Tipperary have staggered through so many melodramas they could have fixed today’s game for Albert Square.
Limerick were too good for them and wouldn’t countenance any recovery, but Cork and Waterford could not withstand the urgency that derives from desperation. Controversy helped their rebound against Waterford, of course, but Tipperary showed in successive second halves that they have forwards of sufficient skill to muster scores when they are required.
They will be needed in Thurles, but only the most complacent Tipperary fan might suppose that their team will, for the third-successive game, find a way. No serious team survives on the fumes that dragged them back into contention against Cork and Waterford.
Clare have a defence not noted for its obduracy, but they have forwards who can score consistently and if they profit from another slow Tipp start, they will know not to slacken off; they will know the importance of denying their opponents even the rumour of a revival.
And an heroic fightback to parity isn’t enough for Tipperary today; they need to win. A draw will probably end their summer. Defeat will confirm it.
They are fourth of the five teams in the Munster standings.
Like Cork, they have played three matches, but with only two points to show for it.
A win would leave them on four points with all their matches played. Clare could, in those circumstances, still pip them in the final round next week, but Tipperary would at least have given themselves a chance.
Anything less and they will be consumed by the remarkable competition the re-cast Munster Championship has become.
Analysis of Clare tends to settle on the contrast between a defence that seems vulnerable and a forward line that can harvest scores.
But that problem now attends Tipperary, too. Their back-line is the most serious of the problems awaiting Ryan’s attention.
In the dust raised by the no-goal controversy last Sunday, only fleeting attention has been paid to Waterford building an 11-point lead in the first place.
Derek McGrath eschewed one of the tenets of his five seasons in charge of Waterford and played a largely orthodox formation of six backs and six forwards.
And it was the offensive unit that created great problems for Tipperary; Waterford thought it was worth gambling their defensive certainty on amassing a big score against a weak Tipp defence.
And it almost worked. Tipp were handicapped by the loss of Michael Cahill to two yellow cards, the second of which was deemed severe, and if there is a line of their team that didn’t need any more disruption, it is full back.
When they won the All-Ireland in 2016, Cathal Barrett, James Barry and Cahill was the best full-back line in the Championship; Barrett and Barry ended the year as AllStars.
But last season, the line was broken up and Tipp skirted with chaos time and again as a result. Barrett’s exile from Ryan’s squad was a big factor.
They hammered Dublin in the qualifiers but still gave their hapless opponents goal chances. Clare scored three against them in an AllIreland quarter-final and should have doubled that tally.
Barry looked the solution to a longstanding full-back issue when he had Barrett one side of him and Cahill the other. However, he hasn’t featured in a match in the Championship yet this year, the tough time he had on Walter Walsh in the League final coming at a punitive cost to his ambitions.
Barrett returned to the squad for this season, and spent a good part of the League a part of Ryan’s experimentation. He played games at midfield, before injury put him out of the first two rounds of the Munster Championship.
He came on as a replacement against Waterford and his comeback was one of the substantial positives Tipperary could take from last week’s chaos.
It is difficult to see how Ryan cannot return him to corner-back, with a recall for Barry surely under consideration, too.
In topping an extremely tight Division 1A on scoring difference, Tipperary still managed to concede the joint-highest in the division, their 6-96 tying with Waterford’s 5-99.
If that can be put down to a coach looking to introduce depth in his squad, there has been no improvement in the Championship. They have conceded 4-68 in three matches to this point, the highest of any side in Munster. They have played a game more than Limerick but have conceded a cumulative 32 points more nonetheless.
Only one team in Leinster, doomed Offaly, have conceded more cumulatively than Tipp’s 80 points.
The League was supposed to be about growth, with front-liners Seamus Callanan, Noel McGrath and Patrick Maher rested, and Jason Forde moving from the margins to a central role in the side.
John McGrath similarly thrived,
The Tipp back line is the most serious problem for Michael Ryan
while Billy McCarthy led the development of a new tier of options for Ryan.
Uncertainty has gobbled up much of the enthusiasm of spring. Some of this is a result of their League final loss to Kilkenny, just as the bad beating they took from Galway at the same stage in 2017 shadowed them throughout the summer.
Doubt is never neatly interred in the county; at the first hiccup, it seems that old ghosts come shrieking back.
If defence is an obvious concern, the problems cannot be isolated there. Against Cork, in particular, the unhappy time experienced by backs was partly a consequence of the shocking lack of intensity exerted by forwards on an opposition that love nothing more than time and space in defence.
Cork’s tactics hinge on how Anthony Nash restarts the game, and if he has space he will pick out a defender with whom they can fire their running game.
Time and again Tipperary forwards allowed this to happen, with Cork working overlaps and finding the space on which their high-energy game thrives.
After the Waterford match, Brendan Maher offered an unadorned explanation for their struggles.
‘I suppose the confidence is down and as a group maybe we’re over-trying and we’re just so conscious that we haven’t got a win yet that we’re maybe overexerting ourselves,’ he said. ‘We’re not comfortable and that’s probably reflected in some of the decisions made today by lads, myself included. I think the stage we’re at now we need to get a win next weekend and that’s all we’re thinking about.’ That victory would go a long way towards extending their summer, even if they could still be vulnerable to results elsewhere, for example if Limerick beat Waterford today but lose to Clare in the final round.
Maher is right: all they can think about is winning.
Permutations elsewhere could still do for them, but they can sweat about that next week.
Survival is today’s job.