Liquidised diet gave Morris food for thought on high tackles

Tipp attacker Jake Morris appreciates hurling referees' dilemma with head-high challenges. A couple had serious consequences for him.

Sat, 05 Apr, 2025 - 07:22

Paul Keane

A full throttle challenge, a head apparently struck. A red card. A game-hinging moment. But was there any intention to injure? In fact, on second viewing, was there even any contact at all?

At the end of another Allianz Hurling League campaign where head-high tackles have been a talking point, you wouldn't bet against Sean Stack being presented with such a conundrum tomorrow. Who'd be a ref?

Jake Morris, who'll be playing for Tipperary, was involved in last month's game against Kilkenny when four players were sent off, a Tipp man and three Kilkenny players. Dubliner Stack, as it happens, was the ref that day too.

The Tipp player dismissed was Alan Tynan who appeared to make minimal contact, if any, with the faceguard of Kilkenny's Cian Kenny. Tynan subsequently appealed but the straight red card stood on the basis that the challenge was 'dangerous to an opponent'.

In all, eight players were shown red in Division 1A games that weekend, a spike in sanctions that was interpreted as the GAA clamping down on dangerous play around the head area.

Attacker Morris can understand people's frustrations. It wasn't as if that Tipp-Kilkenny encounter was one of the more rumbustious between the neighbouring counties. But the 2019 All-Ireland SHC winner has also been on the receiving end of a couple of huge hits to the head which had serious consequences for him.

A shoulder to the jaw in 2018 while training with the UL Freshers left him requiring a corrective plate, pins and screws. Five years later, he suffered a similar injury in a club game.

"A broken jaw and a cheekbone from two different high tackles," said Morris, detailing his injury history. "There was no malice in them (the particular challenges), just mistimed tackles into the face. Your guard can do a good bit of damage to your face if it's caught in the right way. I'm over them now."

But it took a while.

"Yeah, well I had two six-week periods of a liquidised diet and drinking smoothies all the time and having to drink your dinner," recalled the Nenagh man.

The mental recovery can often take longer than the physical one.

"It's obviously in your head and I've seen players come back from tough injuries and it might take a while for them to get it out of their head, with a bit of a scare factor there," said Morris.

"I carry the ball a lot myself. But we're playing this game for so long that you're aware of what's coming and I probably was conscious of it, that it could happen. Every now and then you get a big hit that might rattle you a small bit but I'm fine, I'm fit, healthy and durable for what's coming down the line as well. It's a tough game so you're going to have to take the good with the bad on that side of things."

It amounts to a fine balancing act for officials like Stack who have been entrusted with protecting players whilst simultaneously allowing for high-paced, physical encounters to prevail. Morris understands the difficulty.

"It's a tough area to call," he shrugged. "Everyone wants that fast, free-flowing game and referees do as well. It's just that they're getting orders from above to clamp down on certain things. Hopefully over the next couple of weeks it plays itself out and we start seeing a bit more clarity on what's going on up above and fed down to the players and we can have a nice free-flowing league final and summer."

In the middle of it all, if Tipp can snag themselves a league title, all the better.

"The team is playing to the style we are supposed to play, that we are getting coached to," said Morris. "We are getting brilliant coaching over in Thurles. We are playing the way Liam Cahill wants us to play. That's what we are there to do. I suppose last year we didn't represent that. The work rate is probably the biggest thing I think. Definitely the work rate has been improved all across the board in the team and that is giving us more of a chance to get results."