‘We had to give it everything, especially after last year’

LAST September’s lesson was well learned.

Twelve months ago, Tipperary found themselves holding the whip hand in the final quarter of an All-Ireland final against Kilkenny before crossing the finishing line five points adrift.

For a spell yesterday. it looked as if a similar script was in the process of being written when Kilkenny went about the business of eating into a seven-point deficit after the concession of Tipp’s third goal.

By the time TJ Reid tipped over a 57th minute point, that gap had been squeezed to just a goal, but history would not repeat itself. Only Michael Rice’s injury-time point eventually saved Kilkenny from their greatest defeat of the Brian Cody era.

We had wondered what effect that 2009 defeat would have on this Tipperary team and, after their heavy defeat in Cork, we thought we knew. We didn’t. Yesterday assuaged all our doubts.

“We had to give it everything, especially after last year,” said Brendan Maher. “I remember looking up at the clock and seeing 63 minutes and I was saying to myself ‘Jesus Christ, hold on’. Thankfully we got through it.

“It has been drilled into us all year, especially after last year. The one thing we said we wanted to do was to finish out games and we wanted to be stronger in the last 10 minutes than we were in the first 10 minutes.

“I think we showed that today, especially the lads that came in. Seamus Hennessy, Seamus Callanan and Benny Dunne all came on and scored. It just shows it is everyone. It was a 33-man panel there today.”

Kilkenny’s relentless refusal to accept defeat in that closing spell was no surprise to anyone who had enjoyed even a passing acquaintance with them in the last 10 years and it was equally in keeping with yesterday’s events.

The Leinster champions twice clawed back six-point deficits in the first half alone and almost negated that same margin for a third time before the break at which stage only the bare minimum stood between them.

For Tipperary, such a state of affairs held the potential to breed virus-like seeds of doubt in the dressing room at half-time, given all they had achieved in that opening spell.

“I suppose at the start of the game if you were to tell us that we’d be a point up at half-time, we would have taken it,” Maher pointed out, “But I think it was that we gave away a few soft, silly frees.

“We said we’d try and knuckle down and try and limit the frees because we felt we had the beating of them if we could stop that. Thankfully we came out and got the few goals in the second half and drove it on from there.”

It was never anything less than absorbing and it was to both sides’ credit that the miserable weather conditions were hardly mentioned in the multitude of interviews carried out post-match.

“It was a slippery ball but when you are so keyed into the match and it is as gruelling as it was there today, the conditions don’t really come into play,” said Padraic Maher. “You are going hell for leather, 30 lads. I don’t think it affected the game at all. It was top class.”

That it was. A suitable pinnacle on which any season would be honoured to end, but, of course, that is far from the case for eight of Liam Sheedy’s squad who will be on duty again in the U21 final next Saturday.

Galway have already bemoaned the fact that the game will be played in Semple Stadium and they will hardly relish the task any more after yesterday’s events and the tidal wave of positivity they have set afloat in Tipp.

Those eight ‘dual’ players will, inevitably, find their celebrations curtailed this week, but Seamus Hennessy has no intention of letting the occasion pass him by when the squad returns to Thurles tonight.

“I would presume there will be a big crowd there and that this will push people to get out again next Saturday (for the U21s). That’s another massive day for Tipperary.”

For Hennessy and the rest of them, they appear to be coming thick and fast right now.