What a difference a week makes...
Those are the kind of matches hurling needs, close, hard, down to the wire. I didn’t see Waterford’s win over Limerick but I believe both teams atoned for the awful match we saw in the draw last week, while Dublin/Wexford also seems to have been a fine game.
On the evidence of this weekend, hurling is in fine fettle. An immaculately prepared Gaelic Grounds in Limerick also yesterday, just as in Tullamore on Saturday evening, a credit to Willie and his ground staff, and a word also for Jim Forbes, the Munster PRO, efficient as always. Finally, and I’m not going to leave this to the end, where I normally deal with the referee: I know James Owens came a long way, from Wexford, but it was worth the journey. He did an excellent job, applied the advantage rule really well.
I’m going to start with Tipperary. In my analysis of the result of the Kilkenny/Galway game, I said Galway are going to have to learn to be ruthless, to put a team away when they have the advantage – that applies in spades to this Tipperary team. They were totally in control in the first-half yesterday, playing copy-book hurling, tremendous scores from all angles of the field, raced into an 11-pt lead with only five minutes to go to the break – from that position this game should have been over.
Remember also, Tipp could have had a couple of more goals in that period, they were so dominant. So, how did Clare get back into the game? I’ll give credit to Clare later in this piece, but first, there was the Tipperary approach; they started to showboat, started to take too much out of the ball, stopped treating Clare with respect.
Not alone were they going to score, it was going to be a classy score, every score one for the highlights reel. From my vantage point I could hear Eamonn O’Shea, the Tipp coach, roaring at his players – work, work, work! That’s because he could see the change in attitude on the field, attitude of players like Seamus Callanan, Shane McGrath, Eoin Kelly, doing things they hadn’t been doing. Callanan, for example, taking off on a run with a ball he should have delivered first time to his forwards, losing possession, resulting in Diarmuid McMahon’s goal for Clare, the score that really brought them back into it.
Tipp weren’t capitalising on where they had been most productive, inside, with Lar Corbett already having scored one goal, John O’Brien getting another when he moved to the edge of the square in the second half. Clare were there for the taking, but Tipperary passed up on the opportunity to end this one early.
Diarmuid McMahon’s 1-1 just before half-time exposed what I was saying about this Tipp defence on Saturday, that they would miss those big players who are no longer there this year – I’m talking about Eamonn Corcoran (retired), Shane Maher (injured), and Conor O’Mahony, taken off again.
Against that I thought the two Tipperary corner-backs, Paddy Stapleton and Conor O’Brien, were very good all through, the mainstay of the Tipperary defence, and of course Brendan Cummins was brilliant, two outstanding saves. But Tipp have a lot of work to do to be ready for the Munster final. They were relieved to escape with a win over Cork, they were again relieved yesterday – plenty to work on.
A couple of baffling decisions also, most of all the substitution of Pat Kerwick, who – though his three points had all come in the first-half – was still working hard and working effectively.
Eoin Kelly, too, a great player without question, isn’t yet fully fit and should have gone earlier. And speaking of great players, watch out for yesterday’s man-of-the-match, Noel McGrath.
This defeat was a huge disappointment for the Bannermen, and the reason I say that, Clare had put all their focus on this game for the last six months. The league was sacrificed, Clare relegated to Division Two, everything gambled on the championship – it nearly worked but it didn’t, with the result that Clare have yet to win a really competitive match this year. Now they go into the qualifiers, take on Galway in Ennis – a nice easy one to start with.
I give them great credit though for the way they battled their way back – that, at least, was heartening. You had guys like Patrick Donnellan and Alan Markham who were being roasted in the first-half by John O’Brien and Pat Kerwick, suddenly coming roaring into the game, Brendan Bugler holding his position well all through – despite Seamus Callanan’s goal – and Gerry O’Grady also doing well.
Credit to the Clare management, the swap of Donnellan and Brian O’Connell worked out really well, for both players, Donnellan doing well in midfield, and O’Connell curbing the threat of O’Brien, then Lar Corbett, after O’Brien was shifted to full-forward.
Up front, while Diarmuid McMahon and Colin Ryan did very well, and Tony Griffin came well into the game in the second half, there’s a lot more required from Niall Gilligan and Tony Carmody, two very experienced players.
