Cork v Tipp: Premier chasing Munster back-to-back dream that has eluded them for years

John McGrath of Tipperary celebrates scoring his side's first goal during the GAA Hurling All-Ireland Senior Championship final match between Cork and Tipperary at Croke Park in Dublin. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Back-to-back. The county of Tipperary is consumed by the phrase, we’re told. Apparently, it fills people’s every waking hour.

Never in the lifetime of this team of theirs has it ever been done. The likes of Cork and Limerick have managed to continue where they have left off the previous year but for Tipperary the objective has remained elusive. And hasn’t Rory McIlroy’s own version of it in Augusta last Sunday only intensified the hype around the prospect?

Yes, the burning question for Tipperary is will they finally emerge from Munster two years running?

Not where you thought we were going? Probably not but Tipperary’s immediate aspirations are based in survival, not success. For as yet in this round-robin iteration of the senior hurling championship, they have not backed up what they did before.

Dónal Óg Cusack’s recent claim that no county rises or falls as quickly as Tipperary can be defended or criticised. Certainly, their stock dipped after 2001 but when they again won Munster seven years later it was the first of six provincial titles in nine seasons. Two All-Ireland titles and four final appearances in eight seasons was not the record of a team that faded away.

If both of their 2019 and ’25 glories were slightly surprising after they suffered heavy defeats earlier in both championships, they were startling in the context of how they performed so poorly in each of the previous seasons.

If Cusack had made the point that Tipperary have not sustained standards in the provincial round-robin era, few would have quibbled. For it’s often been boom or bust.

A year after Joe Canning’s wonder point did them in the 2017 All-Ireland semi-final, they never recovered after losing to Limerick in the opener of the inaugural group format.

The return of Liam Sheedy saw them become the first and, to this day, only team to go through the round stages with a 100% record. However, upon the resumption of the group phase in 2022, they were nought for four.

Under Liam Cahill, they have twice finished third in Munster but in between those qualifications was the wooden spoon of 2024, their second winless campaign in three seasons.

If the pattern continues, Tipperary’s defence of their All-Ireland will be as short as Clare’s was last year. There should be wariness. In this competition’s guise, they have yet to beat Clare or Cork in Thurles, Waterford in Azzurri Walsh Park or Limerick in TUS Gaelic Grounds. You would think two of those unfortunate records will have to be broken if they are to reach the All-Ireland stages.

At home, Cahill has spoken of the 2025 All-Ireland senior and U20 successes being a launchpad for the future. At the medal presentation in Nenagh last November, the word “dynasty” was used.

Speaking directly to the players, he said: “To win an All-Ireland medal can do one of two things, and it is very difficult until the ball is thrown in, to discern which is which.

“For one group, it will give them the belief, inspiration, and courage to go on and do it again and again. Then there are the other group of players when it comes the tight spot and the moment comes where they have to give that little bit extra, make that run, have to run back, or make a block, and they say, ‘I have my All-Ireland medal and I don’t have to put the same effort in.’ 

“What I would say to all of you, you have won an All-Ireland, you know what it’s like, you have it in you what it takes to win another. If you can do it this year, given the fact you have an U20 team amongst you who are also All-Ireland champions, and are coming through, and an U17 team the previous year coming through, there is no reason why this can’t start a dynasty for Tipperary hurling.

“It’s in this room, in your legs and in your bodies, the only place now you have to put it is in your heads and hearts, and who knows, we might be here again next year.” 

Medal presentations are nights for praise but promise too and striking that balance is tricky. In 2013, guest speaker Ger Loughnane warned of “the disease of success” and told Clare’s All-Ireland winners they wouldn’t be considered great until they won a second All-Ireland. They went out to Wexford in a first-round qualifier the following season and Loughnane later described 2013 as “the greatest fluke”.

When a second Celtic Cross came the way of Tony Kelly et al in 2024, Loughnane at the medal presentation pleaded with them to end the county’s Munster drought. Four months later, Clare’s All-Ireland defence ended in the province.

“For every one person that dies on Mount Everest, 24 have lost their lives on K2,” Loughnane said about the mountain in Kashmir, which is 200 metres smaller than Everest. “In my opinion, the Munster championship for us has been what K2 has been for mountain climbers.” 

Tipperary’s Munster famine might not be as yawning as Clare’s 28 years, but it is 10 now. Not that Cahill or any of his players should be counting. Survival is success.