Liam Sheedy: Unlocking the puzzles faced by Tipperary's new generation

Waterford's Kieran Bennett with James Quigley and Paddy Cadell of Tipperary
It is a strange experience, sitting watching a game, picking holes in the performances of the players you’d built a great relationship with over three years. You’d prefer to be saying it to their faces. But that’s the nature of the business.
I was in the stand in Thurles when Tipp played Dublin and on Sunday was in the RTÉ studio analysing the Waterford game for the show later that night.
Colm Bonnar has set out his stall in this league to delve deeper into his panel, to assess what he has before championship.
He started on Sunday with nine of the very talented winning Minor, U21 and U20 group of 2016–2019, the group expected to lead the Tipp charge for the remainder of the decade.
I came in for criticism for not giving youth a greater role, especially in 2021, and I appreciate where people are coming from on this.
From my perspective, I always looked to put the best team on the pitch at the appropriate time to get the right result for my county. As a manager, you then have to live with the consequences.
I heard all the rumours. Dalo and the lads even had it on the podcast. That the B team, or the possibles, or whatever you want to call them, were hammering the A team in training every week. But I still wasn’t letting them off the leash.
And don’t get me wrong, those matches were competitive, as they have to be if you’re going anywhere. And sometimes the B team did win, though they never hammered the A team, whatever you heard.
We’d play those matches Tuesdays before championship, in the stadium. Ten minutes each way. And as the cliche goes, someone would always be flying in training. These are all top class, flying fit hurlers. Of course the Bs would put it up to the ‘probables’. They wouldn’t be there if they couldn’t.
But it’s all about context. If you’re in my A team on the Tuesday night, you’re thinking about Sunday, about priming for Sunday. If you’re in the other 15, you know only 10 or 11 of you will even be togging Sunday, the rest will be going to the stand. Tuesday night is your championship. You’re playing for your life. Context, context, context.
To be honest, nobody ever got in one of my teams by holding Seamie, or whoever, scoreless on Tuesday night. Or by shooting the lights out. Now if he did it three or four nights in a row, that might be a different story. It has to be about consistency of performance, about knowing exactly what you’re going to get from a player. And the physical demands of the modern game means it inevitably takes young players time to adjust and adapt.
All that said, I could not speak highly enough of the effort put in by all panel members young and old and I would love to see these lads who were incredibly successful at underage go on and achieve great things for Tipperary in the coming years.
It was hugely encouraging to see the way the team started in Walsh Park, with Mark Kehoe popping a point in the 18th minute to put Tipperary 9-3 in front and hurling very well.
In that first half, Tipp scored 13 of their 14 points from play with five of the six forwards on the scoreboard. There was loads to like about Conor Bowe on his debut. He worked extremely hard which is a key requirement for a half-forward in the modern game.
In the second half, Tipp got two early scores to go level, playing into the breeze and were still very much in touch after 51 minutes (1-19 to 0-20).
But in the next 16 minutes, Waterford steamrolled Tipp and hit nine points without reply to push the game completely out of reach.
That spell will need addressing, as you cannot roll over completely for a long period in a game without paying a really heavy price and that was the case on Sunday.
On-field leadership is critical here and there are loads of seasoned players in that dressing room capable of stepping up to kill that momentum.
Liam Cahill will be very pleased, especially with Austin Gleeson, Jamie Barron, Dessie Hutchinson and Calum Lyons to come back in and Shane Bennett and Pauric Mahony only featuring late on. There is an extremely strong panel there and they look like a team that would like to secure silverware before championship.
Most see them as the team best placed to dethrone Limerick and they will be warm favourites when Tipp revisit Walsh Park in the Munster first round.
But from Colm Bonnar’s perspective, that dry run was useful, as the ultimate time to deliver is on April 17th at 2pm.
Three things struck me as real work-ons from a Tipperary perspective.
For starters, the level of intensity and energy coming from Waterford yesterday was a level above Tipp. From the minute the ball was thrown in they were committing bodies forward with the ball carrier having multiple options off the shoulder. Kieran Bennett’s first point after a few seconds signalled that intent.
Too often, the player coming out of a ruck with the ball was in white. They were working and tackling hard all over the field. Brian McGrath was met with resistance three times in one play before overcarrying and you could see in the fist pumps of the Waterford players that is something they are targeting and a pillar of their gameplan.

Secondly, Tipp will need to take on their man up front more and go at defences. Too often, in possession, they were happy to hurl from outside rather than drop the shoulder and draw the free or create a goalscoring opportunity.
Tipp only got three points from frees which is a sign that they are not running at defences enough. One goal in four league matches is another worrying stat, for the quality of forwards that are there. And that goal came as a result of a rare slip-up by Eoin Murphy. It is hard to see Tipperary coming out of Walsh Park with a victory if they fail to raise a green flag.
And then there’s the puckouts. I covered this as part of my analysis for RTÉ on Sunday night. Tipp simply have to find a way to get their hands on the ball more often for restarts. They have some of the most skilful players in the country so getting the ball in their hands has to be a priority.
They lack a real ball-winner in the half-forward line and were well beaten in this area from the puckout on Sunday. Far too often it was 3v2 in Waterford’s favour as their half-forwards swarmed back the field. You could see in the reaction of Cahill and Bevans when it worked in their favour that this is another pillar in terms of their performance.
The long puckout deep over the half-back line is one option in Walsh Park, especially wind-assisted, and that gambit worked for Tipp to really good effect in last year’s Munster Final.
But Tipp will also have to get much more animation between goalkeeper and half-back-line at puckouts, particularly at 5 and 7. Tipp made it too easy for those Waterford forwards to set off back the field even as the puckout was being launched. The Tipp half-back line wasn’t keeping them guessing.
Brian and Barry Hogan are both very capable between the posts but they will need a better connection with their outfield players in six weeks’ time than what was apparent yesterday.
In many ways, that game of cat and mouse is the key to unlocking a whole lot of puzzles in terms of finding more space on the field. And it’s a puzzle I wasn’t always able to unlock myself. You saw over the years that Tipperary sometimes struggled against Kilkenny teams that dropped the lines back the field and squeezed the space. And that’s how we could have halted the Limerick surge in the Munster final last year, by drawing their half-forwards back up the field.
In 2010, in the All-Ireland semi-final, we knew Waterford would drop back, so we worked the puckout short and from there fed Noel McGrath who dropped off Brick Walsh and did damage.
By the way, talk about AvB, in 2010 they were the most competitive I’ve ever experienced. The hurler of the year, Larry Corbett, used complain he couldn’t get a puck of the ball.
It’s not all gloom for Tipp. Colm Bonnar has learned loads. And the fact that Tipp’s last league title was in 2008 tells you this is not really the true barometer for championship.
For sure the loss of Seamie Callanan, who is now doubtful for the Waterford game, is another cruel blow on the back of losing an incredible leader in Paudie Maher.
But the dry run is done and dusted and Colm now has the opportunity to build his plan for the main event on Easter Sunday.
He is a passionate man who has given so much to his native county and he now requires the supporters to get in behind him and his team. Tipp will be underdogs. But if they can hold their own on the puckouts, match Waterford’s energy and intensity, while finding the back of the net a couple of times, then of course they have a chance.
And yes, when it comes to road-testing Colm's plans over the next six weeks, those AvBs will play a vital part too.