Tipp repay O’Shea’s faith

Curiouser and curiouser.

You would have been offered odds of at least 1,500/1 three years ago had you bet on a hat-trick of All-Ireland hurling draws and yet, here we are, in another September to be bookended by a tale that teases, thrills and torments.

Eamon O’Shea had spent the afternoon on the sideline, close enough to feel the tail of the tornado whipping by his feet, but he sat down afterwards straightbacked and with one leg crossed over another in a perfect picture of serenity.

The smile was almost beatific. “I feel I was a participant in a brilliant game,” he replied breezily when asked for a window into the soul of his emotions. “Of course, you feel drained. You try to win the game, right to the end.

“I just felt the occasion, in terms of the game... I don’t know what it looked like when you’re dispassionate, but when you’re on the line, it was one of those games like 2009, where you felt that it was good to be there.”

That it was.

O’Shea spoke with the demeanour of a man who had seen it all unfold in his own personal preview the night before. Lar Corbett’s best game in eons? That’s what he expected from the man. Nothing he saw from his players had caught him on the hop.

Last summer, the Tipp manager stood defeated but defiant in Nowlan Park as Kilkenny bounced them from the All-Ireland qualifiers and described his charges as “men of honour”. His stance never wavered in the time since.

Not even when Limerick defeated them in Thurles in June.

It was a sermon that had never quite converted a congregation that had come to doubt Tipperary’s appetite for battle when the peddle was to the metal, although one imagines there will be few agnostics after this.

“In fairness, I’ve being saying a bit about the (character of) players for as good while now. I just thought they did really well today. They worked really hard and believed in what they were doing.

“We could have won it and we might have lost it and we were playing against a fantastic team. Their display was also fantastic in terms of the radar on both sets of players. It was just one of those days when it was almost unmissable from both sets of players so I’d be focusing on the positives from the game rather than the fact we missed the other (chances). Hurling is a marvellous game for this, isn’t it?”

Days could spin away with the speed of stones on a pond by delving into the thousands of intricacies that stitched together to make yesterday’s tapestry, but O’Shea was disinclined to do so, as if by dissecting the game would be to somehow dilute its beauty. There was no clarion call for a change to the penalty rules, no introspection on the goal lust of his forwards that coughed up just one successful effort in nine while even John O’Dwyer’s last-gasp shot at glory was dealt with in measured tones. The one topic on which he wouldn’t fail to bite was his men and their worth and in the performances of men like Cathal Barret and Kieran Bergin, two of the five new to these elevated surroundings, O’Shea found a seam on which to strike.

“It’s good we’re getting some new players. Believe it or not, we are in transition. I know that doesn’t go down well, but we are in transition. We’re transitioning into a new team. We had four or five new fellas today. I was really happy for those guys. But I was also happy with the guys who only got a few minutes game time. They have been magnificent in the lead up to this: the likes of Eoin (Kelly), John O’Brien, Paul Curran, Conor O’Mahony didn’t get on the pitch. Those guys are huge leaders. I couldn’t speak highly enough of those four guys in terms of what they bring. If you don’t have that, you don’t get the performance you get.”

These men will go again.

How can we doubt that now?