Will back-to-basics approach end in glory for Tipperary?

We’ll call him Pat, not least because that’s his name. He’s a young man from Tipperary (some of my best friends, etc), who likes his sport and adores his hurling, and various Munster final days have seen sightings of him in that garb beloved of Tipp hipsters, a Boca Juniors jersey.

Yet being a strikingly normal and well adjusted youth, he’s content to regard hurling, much and all as he loves it, as slightly less important than a matter of life and death. Over the past few years, though, he’s had more dark nights of the soul fretting over the vagaries of the Blue and Gold than he deserves.

One of them occurred last August, a couple of days after the All-Ireland semi-final against Galway, upon which he despatched an email in this direction. Two observations he made stand out today.