Liam Kearns hails the players as gutsy Tipperary have the last laugh

Tipperary 1-21 Derry 2-17: It was a good 15 minutes after the final whistle blew in Kingspan Breffni Park when Tipperary players fashioned a warmdown. Wholly understandable, of course. Evenings like these have to be celebrated and the instant reaction was to soak in the significance of this win with their band of supporters who flooded onto the pitch.

But as they got down to a series of stretches, a voice from their throng rang out “What do you think of that, Joe Brolly!” to a chorus of chortles. The comment was in reference to Brolly and Colm O’Rourke’s laughs at half-time of The Sunday Game’s coverage of the Munster final when the pundits were asked by Michael Lyster if it was a good game of football. Tipperary were trailing 2-7 to 1-4 at the time.

Brolly has since claimed their amusement was the result of an off-air joke but it was the perception that counted. Just as Clare’s hurlers used Nicky English’s apparent smile after scoring against them in 1993 to rile them, Tipperary had extracted motivation from Brolly and O’Rourke’s supposed dismissal of them.