Tipperary's camogie side benefitting from the Toomevara coaching clinic

TIPP TOP: Tipperary manager Denis Kelly during a Munster Senior Camogie Championship match. Photo by David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

One Munster senior title delivered, another perhaps on the way. These are good times for a couple of coaches from the Toomevara club.

Toome' man Denis Kelly steered the Tipperary camogie team to a first provincial win in 13 years last Saturday week while close friend Mikey Bevans is coach to the Tipp hurlers who will be through to the Munster final if they beat Waterford on Sunday.

Throw in fellow Toomevara man Eoin Brislane, a former Tipp camogie boss, and long serving hurling coach Tommy Dunne and you have a stable of high achieving gurus all from the same patch.

"We have our fair share of coaches coming out of there alright," smiled Kelly. "Growing up we had a good team in Toomevara at the time, we got access to top coaches ourselves as players so you could say we were almost training ourselves in that way, learning from them.

"We all hurled together, the boys would have been more prolific than me! In the local village we had a school teacher, Neil Williams. He started us all off, gave us the buzz for the hurling and it went from there.

"Ken Dunne, Tommy's brother, he has been involved with the Tipperary U-20s and he's now the manager in Toomevara as well. James McGrath is another very good coach as well so there's a lot of very good coaches that came out of there.

"In our heyday, the likes of Eamon O'Shea would have coached us a bit when Toome' were going well. We had access to great coaches like Eamon, Sean Stack was another one, there were loads of outside coaches that came in and we all definitely picked up bits along the way."

A sharing of thoughts and ideas among that coaching group has helped. Kelly and Tommy Dunne, for instance, jointly managed Toome' at one stage while Kelly and current Tipp senior coach Bevans live close to eachother in Borrisoleigh.

"Mikey has been prolific with his coaching," said Kelly. "He's living nearby so we're able to link up and have the chats and talk a bit about coaching and that. It's great to get another person's point of view like that. You're picking up things all the time, even watching his sessions."

On the Kelly-Bevans potential Munster double, Kelly smiled. "Look, we have one part of it done so far anyway, hopefully they'll get on well next Sunday and get to the final."

Kelly's camogs will return to action the following weekend against Dublin in the opening round of the Championship. After that they will face Wexford and then Kilkenny. It's been a terrific first season in charge so far for Kelly, who also guided Tipp to within touching distance of a league final spot.

"It's Dublin first and that will be a tough challenge but we're hoping to move on things a bit this year," said Kelly, who replaced Bill Mullaney as manager.

"Definitely getting to the knock-out stages would be a target. You have your big three who have been there for the last while so you'd be hoping to take one of those down in a big game."