Tipperary had pact with themselves to stick with All-Ireland final gamble

Tipperary surprised many by playing a plus-one in defence for their All-Ireland hurling final victory over Cork.

While regaining his place on the Tipperary starting team in 2025, Willie Connors has a “straight enough conversation” with manager Liam Cahill. Pic: Ray McManus/Sportsfile

During the two-week build-up to July’s All-Ireland hurling final, Tipperary twice tried the sweeper approach during in-house games.

The A team - their likely final starting team - operated with seven in defence for both in-house games. Both times, the A side was cleaned out by the B’s.

Employing a plus-one in defence on hurling’s concluding Sunday was a natural reaction when faced with a Cork team that had raised 17 green flags on the road to the decider. Employing a plus-one in defence was a natural reaction when reacquainting with a side that had already taken them for seven green flags across their two most recent meetings.

Tipperary's problem lay not in sacrificing pride and the realisation that an All-Ireland would not be won in a 15-on-15 shootout with the red gunslingers. The problem clearly was execution of a sweeper approach they weren’t very familiar or comfortable with.

Such were the scars from the League final pumping at Páirc Uí Chaoimh that Tipp had toyed with the idea of employing a sweeper for their return visit to Leeside for the Munster round-robin. Darragh McCarthy’s first minute sending-off meant their sweeper hand was never revealed.

After Cork put seven goals past Dublin in the All-Ireland semi-final, beaten Dubs boss Niall Ó Ceallacháin explained his decision not to deploy an extra body at the back.

“You won't lose by 20 points like what we lost there, but you will lose the game,” he rationalised.

Liam Cahill held a different view, even if there was initial difficulty in transferring theory to practice.

“We tried it twice, and we got cleaned off by the second team,” midfielder Willie Connors said of the in-house games leading up to the final.

“It's just the lads didn't really know where to be, and it took a game or two. It took a bit of work to get it going. We were kind of cautious of it, but we knew we had to try something because of Cork's power up front, it's unreal to be fair to them. You see what they've done all year, you see what they've done against Dublin in the semi-final, so we knew we had to do something.

“Any team that Liam Cahill puts out, he wants 15-on-15 the majority of the time. He had to come up with something else just in case, so that's what he's done. He trusted the process.” 

Bryan O’Mara was the designated sweeper. In the opening 67 seconds, he read and cut across deliveries by Mark Coleman and Rob Downey.

O’Mara had 14 first-half possessions. Six of those were intercepting Cork deliveries out of defence. A seventh saw him win a Cork restart. He was the outlet for four short Tipp restarts and safe retention of possession.

And so while there was obvious success in derailing Cork attacks, it wasn’t until the 26th minute that Tipp mined a white flag at the Hill 16 end from having a spare defender in place at the other end of Croke Park. In the space of five minutes, four white flags would come from this source.

Bryan O'Mara of Tipperary celebrates his side winning a free during the All-Ireland SHC final against Cork. Pic: Seb Daly/Sportsfile

Two came from short puckouts to the unmarked Craig Morgan and Sam O’Farrell. The other pair came from O’Mara doing his job exactly as Cahill had hoped.

Even though they trailed by six at the break, Tipp, unlike both the League final and Munster round-robin, were still alive in the contest.

“On the day, there's probably luck involved as well, it just worked out. Some days, it could have happened the other way, and that could have been another A v B game scenario in an All-Ireland final, which wouldn't have went down as well,” Connors remarked.

“We were fairly confident that was the way to go. We backed it and we made a pact to ourselves that that was it. We were only going in three points down at half-time until the goal, and we were confident enough it was still working. Bryan O'Mara was picking up a lot of ball, and lads were winning their battles around the field to an extent, so we were confident enough to go with it in the second half and see how it went.

“Six points down at half-time, we were still happy enough how we were going. The second half, I suppose, Hoggie missed a free. From then on, we didn't look back.” 

Collective glory, personal triumph.

Connors was whipped by Cahill 23 minutes into the League final. He saw no gametime the afternoon of their Munster opener. He saw three minutes at the end of the Cork spanking. He saw 15 minutes at the end of the season-surviving win over Clare. He returned to the starting line-up for the Round 4 victory over Waterford. A constant thereafter.

“The league final was a bit of a disaster for us all. But mainly, I suppose, for myself,” the 29-year-old recalled.

In the process of trying to fight his way back into the first 15, there was a “straight enough conversation” with Cahill about why he had been relegated to the bench.

“I watched the game back and so did he. At the time, I was obviously thick and upset and whatnot, but that's part and parcel. I just kind of reviewed it. I actually felt that I was looking for the ball maybe more and maybe other lads weren't as much. That's the way I took it then. I had my words with him over it. We parked it there and then. I said, listen, I'll stay going. There's no issue. If I can get back on this team, I'll offer something.

“Hopefully, I'll have a hold on it again this year, if I can stay going.”