Traumatic Limerick reversal ‘did us no harm at all’, says Babs

IT WAS traumatic for everyone concerned at the time. But ‘Babs’ Keating now believes that losing to Limerick after their three-game marathon in the Guinness Munster semi-final was something of a blessing in disguise for Tipperary.

There was a definite value in playing the three games in terms of experience gained and positions nailed down. And, the relatively stress-free nature of their opening two games in the qualifier series helped get things back on track. However, the real bonus was beating Cork against all the odds.

“There’s no doubt that, with the benefit of hindsight, being beaten by Limerick did this Tipperary team no harm at all. For us to survive Limerick, we’d have had a much tougher test against Waterford on Munster final day. And, I’m not sure we would have survived it,” he commented.

“Instead, we got time to recover. We had a lovely game against Offaly — a real nice game, a game of hurling to give us an opportunity to try out a few more things. Dublin was a similar set-up, another nice comfortable game, without applying too much pressure. Just learning a few things, getting the lads to recover from the three games against Limerick.

“I’d say those two games helped us more than anything else and helped our confidence. We had Seamus Butler scoring and Hugh Moloney, Declan Fanning continuing to do well and Eamonn Corcoran and Conor O’Mahony building up the confidence.”

Any overall assessment of their progress has to take account of the huge contribution of trainer Brian Murray, he insists. In particular he praises him for his training methods ‘and the way he has players working for him.’ “He’s as good as I have seen. He is young in terms of training county teams and he hadn’t a name outside his own parish (Templederry) until I took him on board.

The commitment he has to this team is amazing — the work that he has guys doing at 6 in the morning that nobody is hearing about. To bring back John Carroll and Declan Fanning after injury. He is an incredible advantage to Tipperary.”

Keating says he wasn’t surprised in the least by the win over Cork, pointing out that the performance ‘for a lot of the game’ against Limerick in Thurles (the first replay) had been exceptional. The only problem was that they didn’t finish off the chances they created, especially in the first half. “It’s a young team and they are improving all the time,” he added.

One of the key factors in their win over Cork had been the excellence of Benny Dunne at centre-forward. Beginning the campaign as captain before losing his way for a while, he has made ‘a huge difference,’ Babs said.

The Tipp manager was up front about the decision to leave Eoin Kelly on the bench again for Saturday’s All-Ireland quarter-final against Wexford. It’s basically a question of getting him fit, of having him in better condition than he has been all year.

“It was always going to be difficult for the management to change a winning combination. Hopefully we’ll beat Wexford and he knows well that he’s going to see Croke Park on Saturday. We are giving him every opportunity for him to be 100% when we want him.”

If the general public feel that Tipp got the ‘easy draw’ in the quarter-final, Keating points out that they had not been expected to beat Cork, even in Thurles. “It was perceived that way, so it was a lesson for us not to treat Wexford like that. Wexford have pride and they are going to ‘kick back’ some way”

Right now, this weekend’s game is all that he’s focused on and the message to his players is that he doesn’t want ‘any slippage’ from the Cork game. In particular he wants to see the newer members of the squad maintain their progress.

Further down the road he’s concerned about keeping the profile of the county team higher than it might have been for the last few years.

“What I am basically about is seeing that Tipperary hurling is restored — and I mean restored! When the championship draw is made every October I want the people in Tipperary to feel that their team has a chance of winning an All-Ireland.

“I think we have brought Tipperary back to that stage at the moment. Now it’s a question of driving on from there and building. It would be disappointing for the new lads to slip back on Saturday.”