Tipperary gave everything, says emotional Eamon O’Shea

A departing Eamon O’Shea had to take a sip of water before addressing a question about this, his final game as Tipperary manager.

Clearly emotional as he passed the baton onto selector Michael Ryan, the Galway-based economics professor bowed out not as he would have wished but defiant about the prospects of this team in the years ahead. The Tuesdays and Thursdays in training, he said, were the most special he’s had in sport.

After acknowledging his team on the day had lacked fluidity, he said: “Look, the defeat is a defeat, you know what I mean. I had my innings with Tipp. It was bloody, it was great. We did what we could. We tried to play the game in a particular way. There are men in Tipperary who can carry this on.

“I just feel that we gave it everything every time we went out. We tried to win. We didn’t always win. We were beaten by a point, beaten by three points. It doesn’t look great sometimes but we did our utmost to win these games.

“I said to the players, the belief I have in them and the belief I have that they can continue and go on and grow better when I’m not there is really strong. Somebody else will go on and do this better than I did. That’s all you can do.

“I’m old enough now to know that I had a real good shot at it. I had a real good shot and I really, really tried to play the game the way I wanted to play the game and the way they wanted to play the game. In one sense I feel emotional. Obviously, losing is huge, but it’s theirs, it’s the players’ game. Me leaving is only a footnote. It will be only a footnote.”

O’Shea was misty-eyed as he spoke of his three years as manager and three as a selector/coach under Liam Sheedy. “When you look back on this, the disappointment of a point, you are just beaten, you are not defeated. They are young, they will have other games, so you can wallow in the point, and you can say that we should have done this and done that.

“But I just think what they are involved in and I know I have said this and people don’t believe me, but working with them on Tuesday and Thursdays and the weekend, and working with them, there is no greater thing in sport that I have been involved in. And I think a better manager will come in and get that point or get that two points, and if that happens, it happens. And I am sure it will happen with this team.”

O’Shea was only too happy to be given the opportunity to say a few words about Noel McGrath on his return to Tipperary colours following his recovery from testicular cancer earlier this year. “You have to make serous judgments about a player and whether he can go in or not. He went in. But more than that, and the word inspirational is thrown around a lot about players and managers, but you’ll never know inspiration until you’re faced with difficult, difficult things.

“I remember the Wednesday before we played Waterford, when he told the players. And we were devastated. We were devastated three or four days before we played Waterford. Again, that story won’t be told because it’s not in the winning and the losing, and I accept that.

“But having him with us and seeing the engagement of 30 guys, the players who were supportive of him — and him of us.

“He’s been an inspiration to me. And I’m getting a bit old to be inspired anymore by anybody. But he has really been that.”