Tipperary in serious trouble after awful day at the Gaelic Grounds

Inside Track with John McIntyre

Sometimes, all it takes is one bad match for a team’s season to nearly implode. Tipperary hurlers – second favourites behind Galway to win the All-Ireland title ahead of their opening championship tie against Limerick – are now in a desperate battle for survival after a wretched performance at the Gaelic Grounds on Sunday.

To be honest, some Tipperary supporters saw it coming, especially after the announcing of the team to take on Limerick. Selecting five championship newcomers, including a rookie midfield alliance, was asking for trouble and though Michael Ryan’s charges got the benefit of two timely goals, the 2016 All-Ireland champions were still swept aside in the second-half by the resurgent Shannonsiders.

Eyebrows were raised when Seamus Kennedy, who has little experience of the position, was handed the full-back role, while opting for newcomers Willie Connors and Billy McCarthy to patrol midfield was always going to be a big ask for this untried partnership. To compound matters, Seamus Callanan, Brendan Maher and Patrick ‘Bonner’ Maher were kept in reserve until the match was already slipping away from Tipperary.

Admittedly, all were recovering from injuries, but why bring them on when they were arguably not deemed fit enough to start? Team selection aside, Tipperary also looked very flat, low on energy levels and lacking in confidence. John McGrath did pick off a couple of neat points and Jason Forde took his second half goal excellently, but too many of the players were off the pace, while they couldn’t match Limerick’s hunger either.

Losing the recent league final to a somewhat unproven Kilkenny outfit was a bad omen for Tipperary in preparation for the championship. Having come out second best in many big games to the Cats over the past decade, that was a great chance for the men in blue and gold to get a significant psychological uplift, but instead they fell tamely away in the second half on a day they couldn’t handle either Walter Walsh or TJ Reid.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.