We never got into our flow - Kelly

By Thomas Conway

It isn’t easy being an inter-county manager, and it wasn’t easy being Denis Kelly last Saturday in Nowlan Park.

Like his players, the Toomevara native was dejected at the final whistle. His team had come out on the wrong side of a titanic tussle, a brilliant game of gung-ho camogie which witnessed both Tipp and Waterford battle fiercely through some ferocious conditions. In the end, the Déise just had that bit more.

Tipp surrendered a handsome seven-point lead and allowed their opponents a passage back into the game. Kelly knows that his side should have capitalised on that lead and pushed on. But he also knows that sport doesn’t work that way. The Tipperary boss could spend the winter dwelling on the precise factors which contributed to Tipp’s downfall, but he also knows that Waterford are a capable side, and once they managed to upset the Tipperary rhythm, they were always going to be dangerous.

“Look, we’re very disappointed,” he began.

“A one point defeat is really tough to take. We fought really hard there, but it just didn’t come off for us on the day.

“We never got into our full flow and Waterford seemed to disrupt us. We had a great start, but we gave away a soft goal, and they seemed to get momentum from that. But by half-time we just wanted to focus on getting our work-rate back up. The first fifteen minutes was unbelievable, but we died away towards the end of the half and Waterford took control.”

As Kelly indicated, work-rate is often cited as the most vital component of a team’s performance, particularly at elite level. Maintain a high work-ethic, on a consistent basis, and you’re likely to emerge on the right side of any fixture. Tipp’s work-rate wasn’t bad, but Waterford’s was better. They suffocated Tipp inside the middle third and outmuscled the Premier defensively.

This was a robust, physical game, and referee Liz Dempsey was always going to wield an influence over proceedings. But Kelly was unhappy with some of Dempsey’s calls. He made no secret of it after the game, speaking frustratedly about one particular incident involving Tipp’s Mairéad Eviston.

“We went out in that second-half, and we fought really hard,” Kelly added. “We stayed going until the bitter end. But there were definitely two or three refereeing decisions there which to me were unbelievable. You had one instance where the ball was taken from underneath Mairéad Eviston, and they gave a throw ball. To call a spade a spade, that was just wrong. You know, we’re training long and hard, and we deserve a little bit of respect.”

The frustration, the agitation, is understandable. Tipp entered this game as favourites. They were expected to prevail and secure their first All-Ireland final berth in seventeen years. Tipp had been next-to-near untouchable all season. Their Munster Championship success supercharged their confidence levels, and tactically, everything seemed to be working to perfection.

But Kelly felt that the root of Tipp’s problems last Saturday wasn’t tactical. From a purely strategic perspective, they stuck to their blueprint and executed their gameplan. But there were mistakes, many of them uncharacteristic, and those errors ultimately cost Tipp. The decision to move Karen Kennedy forward was made at a relatively late stage, but Kelly believes he made the right call, at the right time.

He explained: “Hindsight is always good, but we had to keep tight at the back as well, so we needed to have Karen there.

“Look, there was only one point in it, and we missed a couple of frees, we missed a couple of chances in front of goal that we wouldn’t normally have missed. So again, we can look back on it in hindsight or whatever, but we have to call it in the moment, and I think we got it fairly right tactically, but it was disappointing to lose it in the end.”

Whether the Premier have enough fortitude and ambition to bounce back from this semi-final loss remains to be seen, but Kelly is sticking around. 2023 is, after all, only his first season in charge, and on balance it has been hugely successful. Denis Kelly will spend the coming weeks and months scouting and searching for new players as the club championships unfold. Already, even in the clustered hallway of the Nowlan Park dressing rooms last Saturday, Kelly was looking forward to next year. And so, he should be. This Tipp team isn’t finished, and neither is he.