Scenes from Sheedy’s second coming

Time and time again this year we have been treated to testimonials from Tipperary players as to the impact Liam Sheedy has had on this team.

Brendan Maher has been just one of those to attest to how empowering it was to receive a phone call before the season started from the man who had managed Tipp to All-Ireland glory in 2010. John McGrath explained yesterday how some ‘home truths’ from Sheedy had set him up for a restorative year in the blue and gold.

The Portroe man’s experience in management has spanned inter-county hurling, the world of high finance and sports politics — the last of those as chair of Sport Ireland’s High Performance Committee — but the most visible expression of Sheedy’s influence can be found on a Sunday sideline.

Brian Cody may well be driven and intense, but he can give the impression of a man waiting for a bus on his day off under the Hogan Stand; t-shirt flapping outside that baggy black tracksuit, and his hands plunged deep into his pockets.

Demonstrations of emotion were few and far between, and understated, yesterday. When Richie Hogan got his marching orders at the end of the first half, Cody took just a few strides down the sideline, his hands upturned in supplication at the linesman.

Sheedy’s instinct was to bound backward towards his selectors and confirm the course of action now required after this unexpected turn of events. Proof again that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to managing.

There were times during this final when the Tipperary manager crouched so low, hands on his knees, that his nose almost touched the grass beneath his feet. That’s when he wasn’t prowling his technical zone like a caged tiger, pumping his fists and exhorting his cubs to ever-greater strides.

There is no ‘off’ switch with Sheedy — his roars and fist-pumps and boundless energy spilling here into the third and last minute of injury time as Seamus Callanan stood over that last free, even with the game long since won and his own job done. A man driven. A county driven on.