O’Brien: Tribe provided timely wake-up call in Tipp

Tipperary defender Conor O’Brien admitted Kilkenny’s shock defeat to Galway concentrated minds in the Premier camp before the Munster hurling final.

Tipp destroyed Waterford by seven goals in the 2011 decider so O’Brien and his colleagues were expecting a backlash.

“The Kilkenny-Galway game gave us a wake-up call,” he said. “It showed us that if you’re not right for the game, ready to go into the trenches and work hard, then at this level you’ll be caught out. We knew we’d have to be right, that if we were and we got a performance that hopefully we would get the victory. That was our thinking coming into it.