Tipperary manager Liam Cahill driven by proving the lazy critics wrong

Liam Cahill says his good name was wrongly sullied by critics of the county

Tipperary manager Liam Cahill at the Horse & Jockey Hotel. Pic: James Crombie, Inpho

Liam Cahill is talking about his name and how it was sullied. How pained he was by the fallout from Tipperary’s early championship exit last year. How disappointing it was to be told he was something and was doing something that he wasn’t or didn’t.

When the results weren’t forthcoming, he could understand there would be questions asked but only to a point. “To keep proving people wrong is a key driver for me personally and it is a key driver for all the players in our dressing rooms. You don’t take it personally, you never do, but it does hurt when your good name is questioned.

“It’s only sport we played, and it’s probably a bit dramatic referencing your name, your identity, and what you stand for. When you look in at a team that don’t reflect what you really want to go after and what you prepare for, it does hurt you as a manager and leaves you with feelings of looking out the backdoor or looking up at the ceiling.” 

What remarks grinded his gears the most? “I suppose the ones around that Cahill flogs his teams, his excruciating training sessions. I felt it was disingenuous. Liam Cahill doesn’t make it up as he goes along.

“People commenting on stuff like that not knowing what exactly is going on behind the scenes is lazy and ill-informed. I felt, maybe not annoyed over it, but a little bit aggrieved that something so loose like that creates so much traction.

“There were other things such as Cahill plays with a sweeper; Liam Cahill never played with a sweeper on his team in his life, ever. If it materialises it is because of the opposition forcing it.

“When you hear people talking about that, and Cahill’s team not coached right, I got really annoyed over that, with the effort that goes in behind the scenes with Mikey Bevans, our head coach, and the work he does with the players on the field, and loose comments come out that it looks like these players were never coached.” 

When Tipperary backed up a strong 2024 Division 1 run with another this year, there were predictions they were again peaking when they should be puking. “Ye guys, not all of ye (in the media), put the narrative out that Tipp would thunder into it for the league and then they’ll fall asunder. There’s a trend there that you do that but we had to go after the league for little gains to build up that confidence.” 

The last time we met Cahill in the Horse and Jockey Hotel, he and Bevans attended a joint senior-U20 All-Ireland final media event in 2019 where Cahill admitted he was interested in the senior position but stepped back when he heard Liam Sheedy was too – “Liam was the right man at the right time, really,” he said at the briefing.

But might Cahill have been? Did he ever sense he was the right man at the wrong time? 

“Are you taking on a role to be personally successful or taking on the role to genuinely improve the team regardless of the results? Are you taking it on as a hurling person, or GAA person who loves hurling?

“Yes, it’s performance-driven and performance-related but when people look back on managerial terms, they judge it by what you’ve won. But the reality of it is at the time I came in in 2023 most people in Tipperary knew that there was a big change coming.

“But unfortunately, when you’re in a county as demanding as Tipperary not everybody sees that and understands that, and expectedly so. It’s not too different to Kerry from a football perspective, the demands are really high, so that brings added pressure as well.” 

For that reason, hearing people claim Tipperary were in “bonus territory” reaching an All-Ireland semi-final was music to Cahill’s ears. Even if the group felt an All-Ireland final was attainable, that the perception is they have exceeded expectations gives Cahill “a sense of relief”, that people were starting to understand the job of work that needed to be done and continues to be done.

“But now I think it will switch to, ‘We’re in a final, we’re huge underdogs, but there’s still a little chance there that we might just get something that will help us in our continuous progression into the next couple of years.’” 

And the Tipperary flock have returned to their shepherd. Cahill made the call back in January and they have answered. “You can get a little bit of criticism for doing the likes of that, and it was a gamble on my part, but it just re-enforced the belief I had in the group of players I had that I knew when they started to portray the traits that Tipperary people want to see, that they would come.

“For me, the first round of the Munster championship in Thurles with Limerick, you could really sense it was starting to work out. We have a brilliant base of supporters. We got off the bus in Walsh Park in 2024, after a fairly comprehensive beating by Limerick six days previous, there were a couple of hundred Tipp supporters waiting as we got off the bus, and getting in behind these fellas; really genuine Tipperary hurling supporters.

“That has grown and gathered off the back of the players earning it; and I said it to the players from day one, you have to earn the Tipperary supporters' respect again, get them back.”