Tipp show they are far from finished

That was more like it!

A performance of what is the best of Tipperary hurling, arguably not seen since the 2016 All Ireland Final breathed new life into the Premier County and re-established themselves as championship contenders with this convincing win over Cork on Sunday to get their Munster Championship campaign off to the best possible start.

From an early stage, any doubts over the readiness of the team to compete and perform evaporated as they hassled and hounded Cork at every turn, sometimes over eager in the first half leading to eight pointed frees for Patrick Horgan which kept Cork in the game, improving markedly after the break.

With the ball, they rarely wasted it, which is how they need to play. Short crisp passing has its risks as we saw with Cork who like to play that way also but their touch was slightly off and it was enough to have them floundering with the likes of Mark Coleman, Luke Meade and Mark Coleman struggling to impact the game as they can.

For Tipperary, their movement both on and off the ball was too much for an already weak Cork defence to handle as they went onto help themselves to 2-24 from play out of 2-28, and they could also afford to hit twelve wides, as well as having a couple of other goal chances that weren’t taken.

With such prolific forwards in either team, it was always going to come down to which sides defence would cope the best and certainly Tipp won that battle, even if they conceded 1-24 themselves but in modern hurling, that’s just above a par total at this stage.

 

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