Babs Keating: 'Cork have to win something. Tipp are basically on a fact-finding mission'

A teenage Babs Keating was in attendance 65 years ago when Cork and Tipperary last met in a Division 1 hurling final. That there are only two weeks between this weekend's final and the Munster Championship throwing in is "stone madness" according to the Tipp legend

Former Tipperary hurling manager Babs Keating said Liam Cahill can't leave Páirc Uí Chaoimh this weekend with "doubts in his mind" about this Premier County team. Pic: ©INPHO/Lorraine O'Sullivan

Among the conservatively estimated 28,000 that thronged the Cork Athletic Grounds on May Day 1960 was an impressionable 16-year-old Babs Keating.

His first appearance in a Tipperary jersey was to come for the minors a couple of months later but with his father he was in attendance to see his county overcome a Christy Ring-inspired Cork in the counties’s last Division 1 final.