Where to now for Tipperary Football?

By Shane Brophy

It was hard to get away from the feeling that over the last few weeks, both the Tipperary players and management wanted this season to be over as soon as possible.

Despite ending their Tailteann Cup campaign with this win over Waterford, it wasn’t enough to progress to the preliminary quarter finals as Tipperary’s poor score difference compared to Longford (+6) and Laois (-9) saw them the team to lose out as the worst third placed team, to allow New York come into the competition.

While Tipperary wouldn’t have had much to fear against Fermanagh, Carlow, or Offaly in a knockout game, they would have struggled to win, even with carrying in some momentum from this victory.

This campaign has been a struggle right from the word go. Any optimism going into the start of the league evaporated the moment Conor Sweeney’s knee gave away against Down on the opening night and it never recovered. Added to by Steven O’Brien’s injury impacted year, it left Tipp short on leadership and experience at a time when they were badly needed with so many key players having left the panel for various reasons since the high of the 2020 Munster Championship success.

That being said, there is enough quality still there to have done a lot better. Observing some of the Cork v Kerry game which was played afterwards, the key difference between that game and Tipp v Waterford is the pace it was played at. You can’t just saunter up the field anymore as it allows even the weakest of teams to get a defensive structure in place from where it is harder to break them down. You need to carry the ball up the field quickly and in numbers, but Tipp didn’t do that year, either by accident or design.

They tried many things to create a spark with forward Colman Kennedy going back to the half back line to limited success while Kevin Fahey was sent into the forwards for this game as he does have a hard running ability but Waterford were wise to it and he didn’t get on the ball as much as they would have liked.

Strangely enough, the seventeen scores Tipp managed was their highest of the campaign, helped in no small way by the performance of Jack Kennedy who was a class apart, particularly in the first half. He has the ability to be the leader of this team going forward but needs more support.

It probably helped in that his younger brother Conall started for the first time this year and what a miss he has been, another with an injury impacted campaign.

Tipp don’t have many physically imposing players in the middle of the field which are crucial in the modern game, but he is one, and his physical power and his ability to break the line was something Tipp had missed in this area throughout the campaign.

Tipp were patient in how they created the openings and seventeen scores from 22 shots is a high efficiency rate, but you would expect more opportunities to be created against a side of Waterford’s standing.

Another plus was debutante Darragh Brennan scoring two points in his first appearance which can only be a good thing while under 20 James Morris was solid in his first championship start at wing back and does have the physical attributes to play at this level if he continues to develop

The Future

However, the main question on everyone’s minds coming away from Pairc Ui Chaoimh on Saturday was, where to now? Manager David Power has now stepped down after four years in charge.

He will go down as Tipperary’s most successful manager in over a century with his success at winning an All-Ireland minor in 2011, 2 Munster minors in 2011 & 2012, and an historic Munster senior in 2020. Including a three-year stint as Wexford manager, David Power has been managing for eleven of the past fourteen years despite being still a relatively young man.

No one has more passion for Tipperary football than David Power and he will do what is right for Tipp, and he knew a fresh voice was needed. His plans for this year weren’t helped by a lengthy injury list of key players, however, he wasn’t able to call on a number of players who are still in the peak of their fitness to contribute, the likes of Evan Comerford and Michael Quinlivan, who have stepped away over the last two years.

Tipperary football needs a fresh injection of hope and excitement, not only to get some of those players back, but also to retain members of the current panel as the prospect of another league campaign in division 4 can’t be appealing.

Some players opted off the panel in recent weeks which isn’t a good sign for a management having the full commitment of their players, no matter how poorly the campaign has gone, and whether the players reasons for opting off were legitimate or not.

The fear was when the great players who enjoyed a great spell between 2014 and 2020 started to drift away through retirement, injury, travel etc… that Tipp would drift back to where they were for most of the past century which was battling for wins against the likes of Waterford.

Tipp still have too much talent in the county not to be performing much better and that has to be the focus when the management and football board sit down and deliberate on what is best for Tipperary football in the short-term, but certainly a long-term plan is needed, and maybe a John Evans-type personality who really impacted football in a positive sense when he arrived in late 2007 could be exactly what is needed to help turnaround the county’s footballing fortunes.