‘Hurt is a powerful tool when it’s used in the right way’

He has served his county well, but next Saturday Liam Sheedy will savour his special Christmas Day treat more than usual. John Fogarty explains.

THERE’S a Nenagh man living in Dublin who has a specific Christmas Day ritual. For 70 minutes or so, he asks that he has the sitting room to himself.

No disruptions, no excuses. No wife, no children, no grandchildren. That’s all he asks. Just him and the year’s All-Ireland senior hurling final.

In all its glory.

From VHS to DVD, he has reacquainted himself with the thrills and spills of the previous September’s showdown December 25 after December 25. As a dyed-in-the-wool Tipperary supporter, his viewings haven’t always made for pleasant viewing as they’ve been largely non-existent in the credits. Then last year’s screening saw them play the role of victims in a tense finale. Two bullets in the head and they were gone. And how it hurt him so.

This year, though, this year they were recast and shiningly splendid in the lead role. Even if he already knows the ending next Saturday, he’ll pretend he doesn’t just to get the faintest taste of what it felt that day he sat in the Hogan Stand and Lar Corbett sang to him.

Accepting the Philips Manager of the Year award last Wednesday, Liam Sheedy let the audience in on his plan to do something similar next Saturday. Press play, sit back and smile. Except he won’t do it alone. Alongside him will be his wife Margaret and daughters Ashling and Gemma.

It will make for the most satisfactory of family viewing. Three years worth of sacrifice and work crystallised in less than two hours of the most blistering action. A wondrous visible end product to show for the commitment they bought into since the man of the house’s appointment in late 2007.

It was with those closest to him in mind and a promotion in Bank of Ireland in their retail sales and marketing department that convinced Sheedy to call time on himself in October. Then there were consideration for his selectors, Michael Ryan and Eamon O’Shea, who also had absorbing jobs.

After three years at it, 2010 and the glory it brought felt like a natural end for the men. Another season could’ve been pushing it.

“There would be no point in me saying I’ve won this and that so I can give it 90%,” says Sheedy. “That would never have washed with me, it would’ve killed me. It would also mean my day job would’ve been affected so I couldn’t have done that.

“When you’re in the job you give it 100%. We never saw this as the year it had to happen for Tipperary. We never saw it like in year one we’ll do this, in year two we’ll do that. It was a case of this is 2008, let’s make the most of it. Likewise with 2009 and 2010.

“The three of us are in busy jobs, myself and Mick in banking and Eamon in NUI Galway, a very important role there [professor of economics]. The three of us are 100% men, we would never have risked giving anything less.

“The players need to come up with another 10 or 15% next year because the bar will go up again and that’s a good thing. This [resignation] is the right decision. Maybe some people don’t see it that way but if there was no backdoor Liam Sheedy, Michael Ryan and Eamon O’Shea would have been out of a job in the first week in June. It’s a results game but it was hugely enjoyable.”

ENJOYABLE but demanding. Sheedy never missed a training session during the past three seasons. In a job that took him outside the county several times a week, he would have had a multitude of reasonable excuses to send his apologies and hand his proxy to Ryan or O’Shea. He didn’t. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

“In any walk of life, you have to walk the walk. We can all talk away and say it’s an easy game but you’ve got to be up there and can’t be asking for something that you won’t be willing to give yourself. It was easy for me to give it because the response I got from every player was phenomenal. It never felt like a chore.”

This year might have felt more like a mission, though. Kilkenny last year snatched Tipperary’s winning lottery ticket and cashed the cheque. The pain was enormous. Much more than they thought it would be but when harnessed it was utterly effective.

“Hurt is a powerful tool when it’s used in the right way,” states Sheedy. “It was hurt and maintaining the belief that did it for us this year. Everyone could see where we hurt after losing in ‘09 and the lads funnelled that in a very positive manner.

“It can’t be overlooked that these guys are a very talented group of players who have a serious work ethic. Their drive and commitment to one another was phenomenal. It was always about the team on September 5, never about any one individual. That had a big impact. Let’s be honest, we were trying to topple one of the greatest hurling teams of all time.”

Of course, it all seemed like a far-flung dream when Cork handed Tipperary their derrieres in Páirc Uí Chaoimh last May. A case of Tipperary stumbling an open ditch when they were already eyeing up Beecher’s Brook?

“We all wanted to get back to Croke Park and maybe somewhere in there we lost the fact that you have to play really, really well to get there.

“We were stating the facts. We were attempting to beat Cork for the third year in a row. That was going to be difficult. Our record in Cork was horrible. It was clear Cork would always have the upper hand apart from 2008.

“When the pressure came on we just didn’t have the answers. We sat down afterwards and talked about them and learned from them. Up to half-time, we were only two points down. In terms of what the lads did, they had far more good minutes than they had bad minutes. We just had to get more of those good minutes.

“In fairness to the lads, they showed a huge amount of resolve the way they turned it around. They focused on what they could control which was the work they did every night at training and that worked well.”

Was it the making of them? “We would love to think we would have won the All-Ireland had we gone through the front-door, doing the three-in-a-row in Munster. We had to play with the cards that we were dealt and people were saying that Tipp don’t do qualifiers but we were very clear that this group wanted to do really, really well and were going to make sure they worked hard enough to get the show back on the road.

“Everyone from the management team to the backroom team to the players worked collectively to make sure we got the best out of each for the remaining months.”

NOT surprisingly, he cites that defeat alongside Tipperary’s other two reverses in the championship under his watch — Waterford 2008, Kilkenny 2009 — as the lowest points of his tenure.

But there were other occasions when he came in for flak too. Like last year before the European elections when he expressed his best wishes to fellow Portoe man and Labour MEP candidate for Ireland South Alan Kelly in a TV interview. And then there was the supposed issue of having his children alongside him at the final whistle of championship games.

“People are entitled to their point of view. If I felt I wanted my Aishling or Gemma down beside me it would be worked out on any given day. Some people just want to write or say these things but they didn’t sap any energy from me or cause me any heartache.”

It could be argued Babs Keating, Sheedy’s predecessor, did his best to, though. A constant critic of his former player, on the eve of this year’s All-Ireland final he ridiculed Sheedy on national radio as a manager who ‘riverdanced’ along the sideline and hadn’t prepared his team right.

Magnanimous yet steely, Sheedy hardly if ever referred to Keating by name in any press during his term. And still doesn’t.

“You can’t control everything,” he says of Keating’s comments. “I was working with a group of players and we have a huge amount of time and respect for each other and we’ve done the work. And if you know that you’ve ticked all those boxes, you won’t have any regrets.

“The space we were in, we said, ‘Look, we’re doing everything we possibly can here and it doesn’t always work out but when that happens we’ll learn and move on’. We kept it within our camp because that’s what we could control. I can’t control what people write or say but there are a lot more things that I can and that’s a far better use of my energy.”

Sheedy’s circle of trust extended to those outside the camp including former senior manager Michael Doyle whom he served under as a selector in 2003. “Michael and myself would talk quite regularly. I was lucky to have guys like Michael who would always give his point of view and bounce ideas off you.

“He would always have had my best interests at heart and they’re the people you want to be talking to because you will have others who might go the other way. I built up great friendships over several years with Tipperary and people I still lean on for advice.”

Not that he expects Declan Ryan to, but he will happily impart any words of wisdom his way should he need it. Sheedy holds his successor in high regard as he does Tommy Dunne and Michael Gleeson. At minor level in 2007, they’d carried on where he left off when he led the county’s youngsters to the Irish Press Cup and he can see them doing so again on the ultimate stage.

“They’re going to challenge the players and that’s good. Tipperary is moving in the right direction and it’s in very safe hands, the structures of the county board and the supporters club. There is continuity but there is change too and it’s what’s needed.”

BEFORE their Munster opener against Cork last year, Brendan Cummins gave a brutally honest assessment of what he felt was the biggest flaw in the Tipp psyche: “I’m hoping our cycle is coming around sooner rather than later.

“Is this the start of a cycle? Not until you win an All-Ireland and put another one with it. Only then can you talk of cycles. In Cork and Kilkenny they win one, January comes and they think, ‘We’re no longer All-Ireland champions’. Not in Tipperary. It’s a culture thing.”

Tonight in Dundrum House Hotel at the official All-Ireland medal presentation, Cummins collects only his second Celtic Cross. For 16 championship seasons, he knows it’s a poor return. It’s one of the reasons why at the age of 36 he hopes to shut out Cork in Thurles next May. It is the portal to a potential cycle.

Sheedy knows what makes Cummins tick and those that line out in phalanxes in front of his goal. They’re not happy with their fill, he says.

“They’ve got a taste of it now. We’ve only won four in 40 years and this group has a great chance of winning another one or two over the course of the next few years. The sacrifices you make are worth making.

“I would be 100% happy that this group will make the right choices. And if one or two of them decide they don’t want to they won’t be long in being replaced because there are U21s coming on and they have no fear. That winning mentality that is there in the senior panel will be added to by the younger lads coming into it.

“I’m looking forward to it because once January 1 comes around, it’s all about who’s going to be 2011 champions. That’s where the focus will be.”

Sheedy’s duties with the county board don’t actually end until February when he and the recently-retired Declan Fanning head to San Francisco with that most engaging of travel companions, Liam MacCarthy. There they’ll show off their booty and feed themselves on the fact they made their exiled county folk happy. After that, he’ll retire to the bleachers with his family, safe in the knowledge that he did more than right by his county but excited about the unknowns that lay ahead. He has his season ticket already purchased and he’ll be wearing colours, have no fear of that. Fan first, manager second.

“I’m not ruling anything in or out.” Under him, Tipperary ruled supreme.

This Christmas Day, he will savour it again. For him and the people of his county, stocking fillers don’t come much fuller.

Picture: Liam Sheedy with his wife Margaret and children Aisling and Gemma after Tipperary’s All-Ireland SHC final victory over Kilkenny. Picture: Inpho