John Fogarty: Tipperary – hurling’s No1 boom or bust team

It's a feast or a famine with the Premier - that has to stop. 

RIGHT MAN: Tipperary manager Liam Cahill is well capable of rebuilding the side, starting with next year's league. Pic: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

“Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” 

“Only those to dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” 

“It’s not how far you fall, but how high you bounce that counts.” 

Of the authors of the above quotes, only Kennedy would be a surname you would find in a Tipperary line-up. Tennyson and Ziglar wouldn’t but their meditations on loving and losing and bouncing back would also strike a chord in the county.

Tipperary have become a county of absolutes. All duck or no dinner. Three times, they have emerged from seven Munster championships and won two All-Irelands in the process.

For an Irish Examiner hurling podcast in Christmas 2024, we posed the analysts the question which Liam MacCarthy Cup team had the current longest winning record in Croke Park. At the time, Tipperary hadn’t played there since 2019 but technically their streak of three games that season was the best.

A year later and it grew to five. When the iron is hot, Tipperary strike. But when it’s cold, it is bitter and it’s going to be another long 11 months before they start their Munster championship at home to Waterford next April.

Tipperary have become hurling’s ultimate boom or bust side. Dónal Óg Cusack pointed to that before the championship when he spoke of how they have struggled to back up successful seasons.

Would Cork swap what they have, qualifying from Munster for the third year in a row, aiming to defend the Mackey Cup and make a third All-Ireland final appearance, for Tipperary’s habit of coming ever second season and picking off All-Irelands?

It’s a question that should be put to Tipperary supporters too. Yes, their team might be incredibly streaky but three All-Irelands in 10 years would be acceptable by most counties’ standards.

How they become more consistent is not just a matter for Liam Cahill. Over the weekend, a prominent former Tipperary hurler spoke about the obsession with the Harty Cup among competing secondary schools in the county and how it has hindered the development of players.

“An arms race” is how he put it with little regard for the long-term and its worrying ability to inflate players’ opinions of themselves at critical stages of their growth.

Parents obviously want what’s best for their sons but do they know what it is? An old quote from Cahill when he was minor manager 10 years ago springs to mind: “I have shipped a lot of criticism since the Waterford match (opening defeat) and received a couple of phone calls from parents.

“I suppose it's a parent's nature to feel that their own geese are swans, but the bottom line is that we are in a competitive environment here in Tipp and not all geese are swans.” 

The Harty Cup has resided in Tipperary the last four seasons and since 2022 Tipperary have three under-age All-Irelands (one U20, two minors) but it might be masking the truth.

On Sunday, Cahill was inclined to repeat his message that triumphs at under-age level are not guaranteed to be backed up at senior. As a winning manager at those levels, he should know. “We’re still not sure what we’re going to get off these (under-age) teams,” he said. “We’ve a lot of really good talented individual hurlers but when they come into an environment like this where the physicality is through the roof and bodies coming at you from all angles, 6ft6in fellas like Kyle Hayes standing under a dropping ball with you, this is what people tend to forget.” With validation, Cahill also argued All-Ireland medals “don’t come in lucky bags”. He added: “There are some pundits, analysts and former players out there that would hope that they did, but they don’t.” Of course, neither Clare nor Tipperary’s All-Ireland titles were flukes but the more people say it (Clare selector Ken Ralph, former Tipperary captain Shane McGrath) and the counties follow cultivation seasons with fallow ones, the more people are inclined to believe they were.

On Sunday, Cahill spoke to the media for 17 minutes. He isn’t going anywhere nor should he. The Ballingarry man is unquestionably the right person for the job but if Tipperary are to break this cycle of honour and hurt, things will have to change.

Cahill was largely loyal to those who won an All-Ireland last year but not all deserved to be retained. Last year, he was far more ruthless in his team choices. As he said himself, the league will have to be targeted in 2027.

In his recent review of the Wexford hurling structures, current Limerick coach Paul Kinnerk wrote of the need for “a culture shift”. To a lesser extent, the same applies to Tipperary.

The practice of working in silos will need to end if this age of feast or famine is to stop.

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Kilkenny simply didn’t have the players 

Reading Derek Lyng’s body language after Sunday’s championship exit in Parnell Park, it would be difficult to see him returning for a fifth season in 2027.

Four consecutive Leinster titles is a fine collection especially in the immediate years of AC (After Cody). But they are only the entrées in a county like Kilkenny. Now, they go hungry.

Succeeding Brian Cody was a remarkable challenge that his former selector Lyng did with a lot of grace – note his silence after last year’s All-Ireland semi-final controversy – and class.

He was as diplomatic as ever with his choice of words following the defeat to Dublin. “Our effort, as usual, from the players was outstanding,” he told RTÉ. "I can't ask for any more from them. It just didn't run for them and it probably hasn't this year, if we're being brutally honest."

But in those words lay bare part of why Kilkenny fell this year. The willingness might be there, but the players weren’t and that was obvious last July when he made just three substitutions against Tipperary. It was the same losing to Clare at the same All-Ireland semi-final the year before. The pool was shallow.

Take Huw Lawlor and Billy Ryan out of the equation this year, the injuries to the likes of Adrian Mullen and the well was running alarmingly close to dry.

As Lyng insisted, Kilkenny will be back winning All-Irelands but this SHC exit will prompt a lot of soul-searching. If the U21s’ defeat to Westmeath 10 years ago was cause for crisis talks, then this departure will be the reason for full-blown bloodlettings.

Lyng did the unenviable. If he goes, he should be praised for grasping the nettle and giving the next man the opportunity to plant his own rows.

Spare us the drama and kill the hooter 

Consider for a second that there was no hooter in Fitzgerald Stadium on Saturday.

That instead the decision to end the first half was at the discretion of referee Seán Hurson. That, being the fine match official that he is, he would not have ended the half with Evan Looney’s foul on Caolan McGonagle.

That the Galbally man would have had the awareness to conclude the action after the free had been taken or the ball had been distributed and the conclusion would have been inoffensive. There is human error, of course, but there is human sense too.

More’s the pity because the hooter had its part to play in the unruliness that unfolded at the end of the half. Such a sharp, short finish to the period invites the possibility of tempestuous scenes.

Coming as it did just after the siren, Looney’s foul on McGonagle with Clifford acting as back-up set off a chain of events that included Micheál Burns’ sending off for striking Ryan McHugh.

The hooter certainly ensures time transparency – a sin bin is genuinely a sin bin and the full 10 minutes are served – but when it lends to events like those in Killarney is it really worth the trouble?

In the coming days, both counties, irrespective of the roles they played in that half-time mess, may be cursing the difficulty it has caused them.