Hurt is a dangerous emotion

Months of misery thinking about Tipperary’s hurling woes disappeared after 63 and a half minutes on Sunday evening.

This win felt like ten wins rolled into one, made from intensity, aggression, discipline and a nice shower of rain just to mix it all together. It was as good a Tipperary win that I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime; winning when they had no right to.

The first two minutes told Liam Cahill that his troops were ready to declare war on Cork. They won a sharp ball on the inside line for a nerve-settling score. Next, they nearly turned over the Cork goalkeeper on the puckout before making the rebels work unbelievably hard to move the ball out of defence. In fact, Cork could not cleanly break one tackle in that period. While Tipperary resembled a juvenile team in the Munster final, this was workrate worthy of the most intense senior inter-county game. Cork became anxious and all of a sudden the ambush was a possibility.

 

The key to this workrate is not as simple as the word ‘workrate’ suggests. For it to materialise, there must be players (forwards mostly) willing to leave their positions to close down the player who is about to receive a pass. Several times Cian Darcy, Jake Morris and Conor Stakelum would chase backmen out the field, and when they knew it was being passed on to the half back or midfielder would stay going at top pace to help stop the attack. It is a domino effect and if one player switches off then the Cork guys would have gotten out of defence scot free and ready to set up an attack, which happened with ease in the Munster Final.

 

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