Turmoil in Galway bizarre, reckons Pádraic Maher

Tipperary’s Pádraic Maher has found the fallout in Galway since their All-Ireland final defeat to Kilkenny bizarre.

County officials were again last night continuing to find a resolution after the 2015 senior hurling panel expressed a lack of confidence in Anthony Cunningham remaining on as manager next season. Beleaguered Cunningham led Galway to victory over the Munster champions in August’s All-Ireland semi-final before going down to Kilkenny in the final.

“I suppose it is a bit unusual,” said Maher. “He brought the team to an All-Ireland final and had good wins over Cork and ourselves. It is unusual but we don’t know what’s really happening around the scene so I can’t really comment on it.

“If the players aren’t happy, they’re not happy, and they’re probably better off saying it at the start of the year rather than the middle or the end of the league and kicking up ructions that they’re not happy about things. They might as well get it out of the way now.”

Maher joined the Tipperary panel after a number of players had issues with Babs Keating in 2007. As great a relationship as the current panel had with Eamon O’Shea, he concedes there were occasions when opposing views were exchanged with the manager.

“We never really have anything like that with management. Obviously, we had disagreements with Eamon at times as well, certain things that we thought would be changing.

“The way management is now, they’re very open to these things. With us around Tipperary they were anyway, they listen to certain possibilities about changing stuff, they’re willing to listen to them. Other than that the players have never really stood up and said, ‘We want a change’ or anything like that, definitely not in my time anyway.”

Maher concedes Tipperary had “too many passengers” in the semi-final defeat to Galway and claims the players let down O’Shea, who has since stepped down as manager.

“Look, we didn’t deserve to win on the day. Take Seamus Callanan out of the performance and where would we have been on the day? It goes to show, everybody has to turn up on the day to get over the line. Unfortunately, we were carrying too many passengers on the day. That showed, Galway beating us by a point. They thoroughly deserved to beat us.”

On O’Shea, he said: “It’s very disappointing from a players’ point of view that we didn’t even get to the final for Eamon after what he’d done for us over the last number of years. It’s an awful pity we couldn’t get a bit more success. He’s a great man, great Tipperary man, after putting a good base there for the Tipperary team for the next number of years.

“Mick Ryan was there beside him so hopefully he picked up a bit off him. Eamon’s after laying good foundations. Hopefully, we can build on them.”