Jason Forde: 'I said to Liam we couldn’t leave things the way they were'

"We’ve been finishing the games really strong and we put that down to the work our S&C has done," said Forde.

Jason Forde wanted to put pride back in the Tipperary jersey after their disappointing 2024 campaign. Pic: Ray McManus/Sportsfile

Ace attacker Jason Forde said he never contemplated walking away from the Tipperary set-up following their dismal record in last year’s championship.

The Silvermines club man wanted to put pride back in the jersey.

“After the season finishes you’re meeting a lot of people and they’re wondering if you're going back. People are nearly writing you off.

“I said to Liam (Cahill) we couldn’t leave things the way they were. Having played with Tipp for 13 seasons and won All-Irelands to leave on that note wouldn’t have been right.

“You could see the glimmer of hope with the younger players that were coming. There was no one talking about winning All-Irelands, it was about getting pride back in the jersey.” 

That the transformation came about in such a short space of time is attributed to a number of factors he said.

“This is Liam’s third year with this group of players. And the couple of younger lads we are after finding, exceptional players in Darragh (McCarthy), Sam (O’Farrell) and Oisín (O’Donoghue) that we didn’t have last year.

“We just went back to the grindstone and we trained really, really hard. We’ve been finishing the games really strong and we put that down to the work our S&C has done. When it comes down to the last 10 minutes we have the legs. The boys coming off the bench finish the job as well.

“We were so hurt after last year. Tipp is obviously such a mad hurling county and a lot of us are living close to the big towns and meeting people. I remember meeting Jake Morris a couple of weeks afterwards and you’re nearly ashamed walking around after the manner we went out.

“We said as a group all year there is nobody going to come and save us. We had to go back and put in the work and drag ourselves out of it. And Thank God we did.” 

The day they put four first-half goals past Clare in the Munster championship to emerge 4-18 to 2-21 winners was a day he felt the Tipp public were starting to get behind them.

“Munster is so tight, that Clare game and the Tipp crowd cheering us into the stadium. We were starting to reconnect with the supporters. To go down to Ennis, it is a really tough place to go to the All-Ireland champions. That game was in the melting pot with five minutes to go. A couple of big scores got us over the line. After that game things were starting to open up.”