Brendan Cummins to discuss Tipperary U20 manager future with county board 

TERM IS UP: Brendan Cummins will discuss his future as Tipperary U20 manager with the county board executive before the end of the summer. Pic: Ben McShane/Sportsfile

Brendan Cummins will discuss his future as Tipperary U20 manager with the county board executive before the end of the summer.

The Ballybacon-Grange man’s current term concluded with Saturday’s All-Ireland final loss to Offaly during which time he led teams to two Munster SHCs and one All-Ireland title.

“Our term is up now and the three years have been good,” said Cummins. “If you look at the development of players, this year it was nice to win something and to win a Munster championship was great.

“Yeah, I’m absolutely blessed with the backroom team that I have. There’s not a huge amount of us but everyone of them are doing the work of two or three. It’s been a fantastic experience, I must say, the last two or three years.

“I always sit down with the county for a review in a couple of months’ time. We’ll sit down, have a chat and see what the world look like. The management game these days, it’s finicky in a lot of ways. We just have to sit down with the county board and see what the story is.” 

Three-quarters of the Tipperary panel are eligible for U20 again next year and Cummins believes they can bounce back from this difficult experience.

“I think part of the remit when I started in this job three years ago was to yes get success but get fellas to push through to Liam Cahill’s team. Experiences like tonight while they do hurt and are stinging and killing all us frankly, they’re character-building for those men inside there.

“No more than Offaly last year sitting in Thurles having been beaten by Cork, the gauntlet is thrown down to the group to see what they’re going to do next. There are a lot of them under-age again next year and we need a lot of development on them and let’s see.” 

Cummins gave Offaly full credit for their victory but extolled his own players having been written off at the outset of the championship.

“I think that little bit of experience they had from last year where they had nine or 10 of the group that played in an All-Ireland final, down the home straight you could see that in them. But I have to say I couldn’t be any prouder of these men inside there.

“At the start of the year, we were no-hopers. Everyone was saying we didn’t have a chance, blah, blah, blah stuff, which you’re going to hear anyway. But they really battened down the hatches and even today when it was going against us they really fought and fought and fought and that’s the spirit that’s inside in those young men there.”