Bosses expecting more from players

William Maher’s been down this road before.

In 1996, he was captain of the Tipperary minor hurlers when they were taken to a replay by Galway in the All-Ireland final.

Tomorrow, he’s manager as the Premier County go head-to-head with Dublin for a second time.

Maher recognises the need for improvement but he’s been accentuating the positives to his players over the last three weeks. They scored just 1-2 from play and still drew the game. And while John McGrath hit 1-11 from placed balls, that tally included a penalty goal and nine frees; Maher’s assessment being that Tipperary’s players were being fouled within scoring range.

“Another game at Croke Park is an advantage,” Maher adds. “Dublin are familiar with playing there while the All-Ireland final was a new experience to a lot of 17/18 year olds. We’re over that now and the focus has been excellent for the last few weeks. But Dublin are a fantastic team and we have huge respect for them. We knew what they would bring and we’ll have to up our performance.

“Replays often take on lives of their own and are very different to drawn games. But we’ll look after our own performance, work hard on what we’re doing.”

The record between the teams in four matches this year (three challenge and one championship) now reads: Dublin two wins, Tipperary one win, and one draw.

Both teams will feel they could have won three weeks ago, as Dublin dominated for long periods before snatching a draw from a controversial late Paul Winters free.

Dublin boss Shay Boland is anticipating a much improved performance from Tipperary, but if that comes, he’ll expect his players to meet the challenge head-on.

Boland reflected: “I’d be expecting what Tipp expected the first day (from) themselves. It was a tight sort of game with nothing much in it. After the first ten or 15 minutes it was obvious that it would go down to the wire. I’m sure they were disappointed with a lot of aspects of their play but I’d expect them to come out with all guns blazing.”

In the three weeks since, both teams have played internal matches to remain sharp. Now, the challenge can be viewed as more psychological than physical for the players.

Boland agrees: “The challenge is to get them up after a flat period and three weeks is nearly too long – a week would have been ideal. But hopefully we can do enough.”

And Dublin are on a high following last Sunday’s victory for the minor footballers in the All-Ireland final against Meath. Boland believes his hurlers can feed off the success and four dual players are available to him tomorrow.

Cormac Costello, scorer of 1-3 against Tipperary on September 9, hit 0-5 for the footballers last Sunday.

Eric Lowndes scored a point against the Royals, Conor McHugh (scorer of two points in the hurling stalemate) also started while Donal Gormley came off the bench.

All four started against Tipperary, when Gormley was a late replacement in the team for Sean Treacy.

Boland said: “The footballers and hurlers are tight enough group. They play minor club hurling and football with and against each other and it’s a positive influence on our lads. It would have been a bit of a disaster had those lads played three and lost three so it’s a very positive thing and good for the young lads themselves.”