We don’t want Tipp stars’ names to be tarnished - Tynan

POINT TO PROVE: Tipperary’s Alan Tynan and Peter Casey of Limerick. Pic: ©INPHO/James Crombie

Saturday’s draw in Waterford has formed a scab over the sore for Tipperary but Alan Tynan couldn’t help but pick at it.

A number of times, the Roscrea man mentioned how reluctant he was to return to that 15-point embarrassment against Limerick but it’s impossible to avoid it.

The additional time free he won for Gearóid O’Connor to convert and earn Tipperary a point has given the team and county hope. Restored some dignity too before the home games against Cork on Sunday week and Clare on May 26.

“I was out on my feet in the last minute after that free,” he smiled. “I was nearly saying, ‘Please blow it up.’ You wanted another chance to get going but definitely we’ll get a bit of recovery into us over the next two days and then maybe hit the field Tuesday night and back into it.

“A massive couple of weeks for this group and we don’t want to let last week define us as players and people. ‘Bonner’ (Maher) and Noel (McGrath), these guys have three All-Ireland medals and we don’t want their names to be tarnished like the way they were among people in Ireland and Tipperary over the last week. I said it last year that we’ll fight to the bitter end and I think we showed that and hopefully we’ll drive it on over the next couple of weeks.” 

"Pride" and "fight" had been the buzzwords in the Tipperary camp in the build-up. Tynan felt the six-day turnaround from losing to Limerick to going to Waterford was a plus. They had no choice but to put their heads down.

“We didn’t do ourselves justice last week and even thinking back to it you still get caught up in it. I think the six-day turnaround was good for us because it didn’t give us a chance to dwell on what happened.

“We went in Monday night back to a gym session and we just had a chat as a team and as a management group and we just said, ‘We’re going to go for this, what have we got to lose?’ “There was no point holding back and just play with a freedom. I think we did do that for large parts of the game and looking back we would be very disappointed with the goals. Looking back, the first two were quite harsh on us but the third one was a complete lack of concentration.

“We’ll hopefully learn from that going forward but, yeah, a tough week leading into it and I think we showed the character that’s in there, the leaders like Noel, Ronan (Maher), Jake (Morris), talking all week, lifting our spirits. They’ve been there before and they’re the lads you want to be go into the trenches with every time you go out onto the field.

“You see even ‘Bonner’ coming on and winning the dirty ball. That’s something we would have struggled with last week. Look, good to right a few wrongs from last week and a lot to build on going forward.”