Woodlock wound for 70 minutes

AT THIS late stage in the season, just a few teams left in contention, there are stock questions with which you can ease your way into almost any player interview.

With Kilkenny, it’s the very obvious, the chase for four-in-a-row; with Limerick it’s the fact that after such a slow start they’ve still made it to the last four; with Tipperary, well, it’s all that dead air in every one of their big games so far.

It happened against Kilkenny in the league final, when Tipperary took a five-point lead into the break, extended that to eight within two minutes of the restart, yet lost in extra-time. Happened again then in the first round of the Munster championship, against Cork, happened again in the semi-final win over Clare, games that Tipperary still managed to win, but, pattern established, the stock question was in place.

“It is being analysed, will be sorted,” we were all repeatedly assured, but then in the Munster final against Waterford, there it was again. Everything seemed done and dusted with a full quarter still to go, but Waterford come with a late surge and Tipperary are left hanging on for dear life. So, James Woodlock, Tipperary midfielder, it’s still a problem, isn’t it?

“And we are still winning!” he immediately counters. “Every time we go out, all we want to do is get a result. Obviously we want the performance, but we have won all the matches. Of course we address that issue each time we go back into training.”

It’s a good point of course as manager Liam Sheedy – probably tired of the same question – has pointed out repeatedly, you don’t go eight or nine points ahead unless you’re hurling really well. The flip side of that, is that those same teams won’t be dominated for the full 70 minutes, but the crucial thing is that Tipperary have kept on winning.

This Sunday, it’s Limerick, and for James and his blue-and-gold team-mates, a sense of deja vu. Not because they’re so familiar with this Limerick team, but because almost a year ago to the day, Tipperary were in exactly this same situation. Munster champions, favourites, coming up against a Waterford side that had struggled through the qualifiers, Tipp were expected to win. Instead we had one of the shocks of the season, and the Déise went on to contest their first All-Ireland final in over 40 years.

“We’re on a hiding to nothing,” says Woodlock. “But you have to take into account that the last time we played Limerick it took us three matches and in the end we did not come out with the result. Limerick won and went on to reach an All-Ireland final. We haven’t reached an All-Ireland final in eight years.

“We lost an All-Ireland semi-final last year and we are not going to forget the feeling in the dressing room. I’ve lost matches before, lost an U-21 All-Ireland final, but I think the dressing-room last year was the worst I’ve been in.

“Tipperary is a hurling county that wants to be in an All-Ireland final, and everyone was talking it up that it was going to be Kilkenny/Tipp in an All-Ireland final. Instead, we had to watch the All-Ireland final; we weren’t in it, at the end of the day we weren’t good enough to be in it.”

Even seeing the hammering dished out by Kilkenny to Waterford in that final, the fact that this could have been happening to them, was no consolation to James or his team-mates.

“No, I’d still rather have been walking out on the pitch on All-Ireland final day. Look, if we’re to progress this year from last year we have to win an All-Ireland semi-final and that’s it. That’ll be the end product for us, to get to an All-Ireland final. Even with all the rain we’re having there’s still a huge drought in Tipperary, a drought for success.

“Tipperary are a proud hurling county and people don’t talk about anything else. If it’s not the county they’re talking about it’s the clubs. The fans are there for us and all they want is for us to do it for them and they’ll keep supporting us. Growing up everyone was watching Tipp in All-Irelands finals, and players before me were watching Tipp in All-Ireland finals. Yet we haven’t done it for eight years – that’s too long.

“You hear about all these older players who have four or five All-Ireland finals, and we don’t have one in our back pocket.

“Tipperary is a proud hurling county and we want to be up in Croke Park hurling away. We’re doing it for the last few years but we’ve got to keep pushing on.

“Tipp haven’t been in a final for eight years so we’re looking forward to this.

“Tipperary fans are looking forward to us playing in a semi-final and hopefully a final because we haven’t been there in a while. Hopefully we can put the result together.”

The opportunity is there for them, but, 70 minutes, that’s what it will take, 70 non-stop minutes of hurling. Go to sleep at any stage of the game at this stage of the championship, and when you wake up, it can be all too late.