Cunningham: Tough games caught up with us, but there is tremendous talent here

"Sport is a cruel master." Those were the words from Tipperary manager Eamon O’Shea after Saturday evening’s win over Galway, but he was referring particularly to his counterpart in maroon, Anthony Cunningham.

“It is cruel,” Anthony agreed. “You wouldn’t have seen that finish with 20 minutes to go, five points up [six actually!]. We got a tremendous performance out of our guys but I think we tired badly in the last 15 minutes. Tipp finished stronger, got some very good scores. We can’t say a thing about the performance, they threw everything at this game. It was a tremendous battle but we’ve had a tough few weeks with matches.”

Tough wouldn’t begin to describe it. Draw and a replay loss to Kilkenny, then drawn against Tipperary away a week later, a driven, highly-motivated and still ultra-talented Tipperary. “Absolutely, yes, they’re a tremendous team, tremendous skill and hurlers here. To come down to Thurles any time is difficult. We’ve had to play those three games in two weeks, probably the toughest draw of any we could get.”