Tipp not at top of their form, admits Cummins
BRENDAN CUMMINS could hardly have anticipated several months ago that his best chance of a second Munster senior championship medal would be with the Tipperary footballers. He may have secretly hoped for an elusive double, but, like most observers, he would have been confident enough of another success for the hurlers. However, he ended up with nothing bar his reputation as hurling's most dynamic goalkeeper intact and an enhanced
rating as a footballer to rival that of his father John.
Now his sole focus is on Sunday's Guinness All-Ireland hurling semi-final in Croke Park and a first championship meeting with great rivals Kilkenny.
Whatever about the possibility of any pitfalls lying ahead of them following wins over Clare and Limerick, the Munster hurling final defeat certainly upset the confidence of the team. "We've been lucky enough that we've got the wins over Offaly and Antrim under our belt. You could say it has re-boosted our confidence and it was needed,'' he says.
"But no matter how many games you have won, going in to play Kilkenny it's all in the history books. Obviously if you don't perform, you're out this time. There's no second chance at this stage and it's probably the best way to have it.''
From his perspective, he saw nothing in their performance against Limerick to indicate all might not be well with the team. In fact, he points out that the consensus amongst the pundits afterwards was 'it was the best Tipp team ever seen'.
"Then again, that's what makes hurling so great. You come out the next day and you meet Waterford. Every one of the team hits form and shows what way they can hurl and they wipe us out. Then it was back the drawing board.
They stumbled over Offaly and really stumbled over Antrim, he says. As a consequence, they can't be sure what kind of form they can expect to produce on Sunday. But he feels Kilkenny are in the same situation.
"They stumbled over Wexford and so people are probably asking the same questions about them''
He dismisses the view that Tipperary did not perform up to standard in the Antrim game. To suggest otherwise would be unfair to the northerners. "We weren't allowed to be at our best and it wasn't a case of taking them for granted. They were very well prepared. You could see Dinny Cahill had done a great job with them. They were flying it. Only for Eugene O'Neill getting the goal late in the game the last few minutes could have been heart-stopping.''
The inevitable result of that performance has been a questioning of the character of the Tipperary team. Nobody is quite sure if the team can get back to where they were last season. When that point was put to him, Cummins pointed out that the same questions were asked of Clare after they had lost to Tipp on May 19.
"The question marks are there, no doubt about that. But that's what sport is all about answering questions. The day there are no questions to be answered is the day you retire. There's nothing left for you in the game.
"For us, it's not the ideal way to be going into an All-Ireland semi-final. The ideal would have been to beat Offaly and Antrim convincingly and go in on a high.
"But, that's not the way it has happened for us. We have to really fight our way out of this corner we are in."
Cummins doesn't believe Kilkenny will be affected by their long lay-off as Waterford were last Sunday. It's because he feels they are "well used to waiting" over the last four or five years.
It was different for Waterford, he says, because it was all so new to them. "They had a huge high and they were looking around for someone else to play to keep that high going. But it fell flat on them. They built it up all right, but to sustain it for the full 70 minutes was the problem they had on the day.''
Mention of problems prompted the obvious question about Tipp having no experience of the new Croke Park surface, other than a run-out last evening. In his view, the pitch does make a difference.
"The ball is skidding off it, it seems. Ger Canning probably summed it up best when some player said it was like a golf ball hitting off concrete," he says.
Then again, it doesn't make a difference if it's played in the car park.
"If you're good enough, your first touch will be right. But it is something to get used to. At the same time, there is no way a team can use the pitch or the surrounds in Croke Park as an excuse. If you are playing hurling that's where you want to play. It's what you dream of.''
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