Tipperary senior football final still a dual affair

HOLDERS: Clonmel Commercials captain Séamus Kennedy, left, celebrates with teammate Seán O'Connor after the Tipperary County Senior Club Football Championship final in 2025. Pic: Michael P Ryan/Sportsfile.

In recent editions, Loughmore-Castleiney’s dual ambitions have been the story of the Tipperary championships. This year, the roles have been reversed.

Loughmore have had six weeks of sole focus on football. 

Meanwhile, Clonmel Commercials have been going week in, week out with their sister club St Mary’s.

Of the 30 Clonmel players set to tog out in Sunday’s senior football final, 17 were involved as Mary’s won the premier intermediate hurling crown last weekend to secure their senior status. Seven are likely to start both finals, including dual captain Séamus Kennedy.

By suppertime, Commercials and Loughmore will have shared 14 of the last 15 Tipp SFC titles between them (Clonmel 8-5 ahead right now), alongside their hurling silverware of recent years. Yet they are intrinsically different dual clubs.

Loughmore have to squeeze every drop from their playing pool. Commercials’ challenge has been handling a significant churn.

The All-Ireland minor football triumph of 2011 was the genesis for a golden generation of Tipp footballers. Of the 20 players who featured that day, Commercials accounted for the biggest share with six. Loughmore were next, contributing three starters.

Commercials have one player left from that crop: Séamus Kennedy. Loughmore’s trio are all still starring: John McGrath, Liam McGrath, and John Meagher.

“There are different challenges in an urban area than you get in a rural area where the GAA is such a focus,” says Commercials chair Martin Quinlivan, whose son Michael has transferred to Dundalk Gaels after years doing that six-hour round trip.

“Now, I'm not saying it wouldn't have been a focus in our players, but just in urban areas, there's greater churn.” 

For all his on-field achievements, their three-time All-Ireland hurling champion has been a significant figure in bringing Commercials and Mary’s closer together. Where Loughmore haven’t lacked dual advocates, Kennedy has paved the way for a new age of collaboration in Clonmel.

Penning his All-Ireland final diary in the Irish Examiner back in 2019, Kennedy said: “When anyone asks my club, I say St Mary’s/Commercials. Not everyone sees it like that.

“They are separate entities, pull different directions. It maddens me often, that you are seen as a hurling man or a football man, rather than a Clonmel man. Why the divide?” 

These days, it helps that Mary's hurling manager Fergal Condon captured a Munster football title and five county medals with Commercials, captaining them to the 2012 triumph that began a golden era.

“It's probably reasonable to say that over the years, the two clubs were nearly each other's greatest rivals. We were competing and there wasn't a lot of working together,” says Quinlivan.

“Over the last three or four years, the respective managements were probably the first instigators of working it from the players' point of view.

“But the players, and Séamus was probably in the vanguard of that, were also coming back and going, look, we're not going to be pulled in each direction.” That sparked greater cooperation between the clubs at committee level.

“Our greatest issue is a joint issue in terms of facilities,” says Quinlivan. “We compete at every age group in hurling, camogie, football and ladies football. The only pitch that we have is the Clonmel Sportsfield. There's no floodlights in that pitch. And it's in high demand.” 

The field is not just the shared home of Mary’s and Commercials. It was the primary football venue for the Tipp men’s team in 2025 and the women’s team this year. It also hosts a heap of divisional semi-finals and finals across all age grades.

The lack of floodlights means that Mary’s and Commercials have been travelling 40 minutes up the road to rent out Dr Morris Park in Thurles for training.

“If you take a look at Clonmel as the county town in Tipperary, the biggest town, there's no school in Clonmel, primary or secondary, that has a full-sized GAA pitch of their own. It’s bits of pitches. You couldn't play a match on them,” says Quinlivan.

“We have good working relationships with them, but if you're a proper senior club in hurling or football, any decent coach needs to be able to put on a full-sized game as part of their training programme.

“One of the real benefits of the two clubs and indeed our ladies club and the camogie arm of St Mary’s working together is that we can actually put plans in place to try and come up with a second pitch.

“It won't be on the same site, there's no space there, but we're working with various stakeholders to try and come up with a solution.

“We hope to be ready to launch some sort of a plan in the not-too-distant future that would give us a second location, but maybe floodlit.

“That work is crystallising a really good working relationship between the two clubs. There's always been crossover, but now there's a recognition that we're actually a stronger unit by working together as two clubs for a joint aim.”

On the field, Commercials have produced a new wave of inter-county talent, led by James Morris, Peter McGarry, Joe Higgins, Cian Smith, Mark Corcoran, Darragh O’Connor, and Shane Ryan, to stay at the top.

Quinlivan adds: “In the last three or four years, we've lost half a dozen county senior standard players from the group: the three Kennedys, Colman, Jack, and Conall, Jason Lonergan, Michael Quinlivan, and Ian Fahey.

“All of these guys played county senior football with Tipp to a very successful level. None of them are too old to be still playing senior football. They just weren't able to continue.

“We've been lucky enough that there are a number of new players that have come through. They've a road to go to achieve the success of some of the players we've lost, but so far, so good. They certainly have the talent.”