Champs gear up for Premier parade

THE homecoming for the victorious Tipperary hurlers is set to take place in Semple Stadium tonight after the team has journeyed down from Dublin by train.

It is expected that the All-Ireland winners will arrive in Thurles train station between 6.30pm and 7pm, from where they will travel by bus the short distance to Semple Stadium. Tipperary county board chairman Barry O’Brien is urging fans from around the county to attend tonight’s celebrations.

“It’s such an important win for the county as we’ve a great spread of players from clubs. You look at Gearóid Ryan is from Templederry, Shane McGrath from Ballinahinch and Conor O’Mahony from Newport. Those clubs wouldn’t be synonymous with All-Ireland winners but these are the stars of this team now. It’s great for all those clubs.

“The cup will then go to Mullinahone on Tuesday night, the club of captain Eoin Kelly. That’ll be a fantastic occasion as Eoin is the first man from the South division to captain an All-Ireland winning Tipperary senior team. I’m from the division myself and I know we’ll celebrate all over the division. It’ll be a very proud moment for Mullinahone with Eoin Kelly, Paul Curran and Paul Kelly. Eoin’s a great captain and I thought he made a wonderful speech there today. He really deserves this success.

“I’m delighted as well for Brendan Cummins, one of the longest-serving players in the squad. He’s a neighbour of mine, coming from Ballybacon-Grange. He’s a consummate ‘professional’, he looks into the game well and he prepares well. I’ve no doubt he’ll break the record for the most championship appearances next year.”

O’Brien is also confident that Liam Sheedy will remain in charge of Tipperary for the 2011 campaign.

“I’m fairly convinced that Liam will stay on. I have great faith in these players and the management. I will support Liam Sheedy and those boys to stay looking after those boys as long as they want. There’s no better management and no better players. I’m very proud of them.

“A lot of people felt last May that this team had no future. There was a lot of criticism of the team, even within Tipperary. It was great to come back out today. I knew when we got back to the final we’d win it. The pain of losing last year contributed a lot to winning this year. Given the rivalry that exists between Tipp and Kilkenny, we wanted to win and also stop them getting the five-in-a-row.”