Corcoran: How Tipp recovered from lowest ebb

August 19, 2012. July 5, 2014. Seminal dates in Tipperary hurling.

Seminal shifts too, the first a low they hope will never be repeated; the second the recovery from it.

The stain of that 18-point defeat by Kilkenny 25 months ago has faded a little this year but it remains. The abjectness of the second half and that unfortunate first-half tactic of Lar Corbett following Tommy Walsh.

That day, a pact between the team and its supporters was broken. Eamon O’Shea recognised it. In a bid to win back some of their faith, he arranged for training sessions to take place around the county. If they weren’t going to come to the team, the team would come to them.

“It was the defeat but also the manner in which it happened,” recalls 2001 All-Ireland winner Eamonn Corcoran. “Everyone remembers it for Lar and Tommy. The way the second half went, people came away scratching their heads. It took a good bit of time for supporters to figure out what happened. They always go back to it and nobody seems to know what happened. Tipp supporters just had to move on from it and in fairness to Larry, he did too. There was a lot of pressure on him. It took a lot of mental strength for the players to come back from that. It’s not easy going to work and Tipperary people are questioning your performance. This bunch they’ve turned it around and Sunday will show how much they’ve turned it around.”

But it wasn’t until this summer that Tipperary started to believe in their own players again. “Only since the last 10 minutes of the Galway game,” admits Corcoran. “Up to that, Tipp supporters had been disappointed. They knew there was potential within the bunch but they weren’t playing at the level they were capable of.

“Last year, nearly every Tipp person went down to the Gaelic Grounds expecting them to beat Limerick. Then the qualifier draw away to Kilkenny didn’t help. It was a baptism of fire for Eamon O’Shea in his first year.

“This year they’ve shown we underestimated them. They proved this year how good they are but for 50 minutes of that Galway game, we didn’t perform at all. I think the pressure was lifted when they came into their own in those last 20 and that spread through the players. You saw it the last day against Cork, they’re expressing themselves. Darren Gleeson with the short puckouts... we didn’t see that up until now. It’s a confidence thing coming from the management.”

Corcoran was just as delighted to see Tipp respond after defeat to Limerick, the significance of which was accentuated by local reports of the players over-socialising in the days after.

“There was criticism of them and I know when you win, lads don’t even look at it, and you’re allowed to have your few pints. I was at weddings around the early stages of the National League and around Christmas time and these players were drinking water and had gone to bed early. They were beaten and had a few drinks. I think people need to remember the sacrifices they put in for the rest of the year.”