Liam Cahill calls for greater underage effort
In the wake of yesterday’s final defeat, Cahill claimed Tipperary hurling “needs help” and called for an increase in the funding and resources pumped into underage structures in the county.
“At U14, U15, U16, we need help,” remarked Cahill.
“We definitely need help in those areas. We need help from past players, we need help from our County Board in relation to resources and finances. I was in Holycross all day last Saturday week at the U16 tournament, I was in Fermoy the year before at the U17’s. Other counties are throwing a lot of resources at this. Tipperary arrived there with maybe not as much backroom help as they should for an inter-county team.
“At the end of the day, if you are in an inter-county set-up, be it U15, U16 or U17, these lads are going in expecting everything to be at an inter-county standard.
“As well as the help from past players, we definitely need a little bit more resources, finance and funding to be thrown at underage level.”
Cahill cited Galway’s two early second-half goals as the turning-point of yesterday’s curtain-raiser and also felt several of his players did not play to their potential.
“Goals were the difference. We definitely got two decent enough chances for goals in the first-half.
“The Galway goalkeeper produced an excellent save to deny Gary Ryan. Tommy Nolan was unlucky with one that blazed an inch or two over the bar. In finals you have to be taking them. They weren’t that big a deal at the time, but when you add it all up, they do count at the end.
“We looked in the game right up to the 40th minute and then all of a sudden we were hit for two sucker-punch goals. You are drawing in water then and bucketing like hell to stay afloat.
“We said we would try mark their sweeper, Seán Loftus, in the second-half, eliminate his distribution of the ball and hopefully pick off a score or two.
“I thought maybe turning for home Galway would have to chase the game and take him out of there altogether. It went the full circle, it went the other way around.”
Galway boss Jeffrey Lynskey paid tribute to the contribution of his bench. Similar to their semi-final replay win, two men sprung from the line delivered crucial goals.
“Liam Forde, in fairness, came on and got a critical goal off his left hand side. That was huge. The subs as per normal did the business. Michael Lynch didn’t make the starting team, came on and burst onto a ball to score a great goal. I’m delighted with them, it was near enough a total performance.
“We were not happy with conceding a goal, it would have been nice to go through the whole championship without conceding a goal. That’s being greedy, but I’m delighted with the effort of everyone.
“They worked ferociously hard as a group, but we created a learning environment. I’m a teacher and we’re looking for marginal gains. The aims is to get a mutual respect between management and players and work off a total performance model built by Pat Daly.
“I’m ten or 12-years as a coach and educator and putting into practice what we’ve learned has brought an All-Ireland.”
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