Steven O’Brien promises more to come from Tipperary

For all their progress, Sunday afternoon seemed disappointingly familiar to a 2010 rerun for Tipperary.

Back then the reigning All-Ireland champions came to Semple Stadium and suffered the concession of an early goal but made it to the changing rooms ahead by a score. By the 50th minute, it was all over. That Bryan Sheehan was man-of-the-match in 2010 only adds to the deja vu.

Then, too, Kerry were plenty forewarned about the Tipperary dangers, the Premier having just won their first ever Munster U21 title — a feat only repeated this spring.

Steven O’Brien, one of Tipperary’s promising batch of U21s, suffered his first ever loss to the Kingdom on Sunday, but was most disappointed by his side’s failure, once again, to bring Kerry beyond the 50-minute mark:

“We wanted to go toe-to-toe with these until the last five minutes and we were hoping the crowd in Thurles would really get behind us and who knew what could’ve happened? Unfortunately on the day that didn’t happen. Kerry just out-foxed us.”

However the 11,248 crowd was a sign of progress, as were the levels of intensity Kerry were forced to produce. O’Brien knows they forced Kerry into a performance and that Tipperary didn’t fully deliver one.

“Kerry knew before they came that they were going to have a game and out there they definitely felt as if they were in a game.

“We didn’t convert enough and we know ourselves that there’s more left to come from this team. We’ll use it as a learning curve anyway, that’s for sure.”

Thirteen wides in missing out against Kerry, 14 wides last year against Cork. On both occasions, the large majority were in the second half, with a Munster final berth there to be won.

The gap closes but the areas to improve remain the same.

Drawn on the tougher side of the qualifiers, O’Brien still sees the All-Ireland quarter-finals as a realistic target: “We’ll be going the scenic route to try to get into an All-Ireland quarter-final but that’s just what we have to do. Whoever we get, we’ll hope to get through them and move on to the next round.”