IN ALL FAIRNESS - Righting the Ship

This column must be going for a good fifteen years now and is generally 800 words of free-gratis to comment on anything I like, hopefully making some kind of sense, and without libelling someone, thankfully that hasn’t happened, so far.

This week, I am taking a rare personal indulgence to talk about Lorrha’s success in the premier intermediate hurling championship, and returning to the senior grade, of which I played a small part in as a selector along with Ken Hogan, Brian Carroll, Conor ‘Red’ O’Sullivan and Willie Fogarty.

November 13th, 2021, was a dark day when the club were relegated to the third tier of Tipperary hurling. Coming off the back of reaching the O Riain Cup final the year before, to go from top to bottom of that grade in one year was not only embarrassing but also one you wondered how will things be picked up.

When you get relegated in any grade, one thing that is easy to do is to feel sorry for yourselves and the malaise becomes deeper, and you suddenly find yourself struggling once again. That is what happened Lorrha post 1998 when they were relegated previously and the malaise lasted for a good seven years before the ship was righted fully, despite the best efforts of a number of management teams.

It's to the credit of the current panel of players that not only have the turned things around as quickly as they have, but also securing back-to-back county titles in different grades, something that is incredibly hard to do considering the ultra-competitive nature of the hurling championships in this county.

This years success feels like an achievement whereas last years was more of a relief. It was an intermediate title run where everyone was touting Lorrha as the clear favourite from the start, but it only takes one game for the floor to be pulled from under you and that almost happened in the quarter final against Borrisokane, a game we were very fortunate to take to extra time.

This year, the pressure was off to a certain extent. There was no talk of doing back-to-back, but certainly there was a belief that Lorrha could challenge for the O Riain Cup like they did in 2020 when they got all the way to the final, losing to Mullinahone. It was one game at a time but like losing, winning is also a habit and when you get on a run, a team with momentum is hard to stop. The current unbeaten run in championship is now at seventeen games, 16 wins and one draw.

Like any good team in any sport, first and foremost you need good players, and we have that, but a successful team needs more than that, most importantly is a steely determination that when a game is close, they’ll have the composure to see it through. In this campaign against Burgess, Gortnahoe/Glengoole, Killenaule, Portroe (county) and Clonakenny, Lorrha have been behind to some degree going into the last fifteen minutes. Last Saturday in the final replay, we were behind with eight minutes to go with all the momentum with Sarsfields. Yet in the eleven minutes that followed, Thurles wouldn’t score again and Lorrha got the two scores that were required to edge to victory.

That was pressure as Lorrha had more to lose than Thurles Sarsfields. Thurles already have a senior team and this potential success would have merely validated their club as being the premier in the premier county, who potentially had the honour of being the first to have two senior teams next year. Losing to another clubs second team is hard psychologically, even though you are playing a team that if you gave them a different name are more than deserving of being in the grade they are in regardless if they are not the best twenty or so players in their own club.

There is a lot made about being a senior club, not only in Tipperary, but in most counties, as it tends to lead to plenty of debate when it comes to competition structures as being classed senior is a badge of honour when you talk hurling to people around the country. I can’t talk for the other members of the management team or the players, but I can’t say it was much of a motivating factor this year to get back to senior level.

Winning a county title wasn’t a target either, it was about winning the next game. You can’t win a championship in Tipperary without winning at least six games so you can’t really target a title until you get to a final, and to do that you have to win each of the five games before it.

To pit our wits against Thurles Sarsfields first team, Kiladangan, Nenagh Eire Og etc… is something to look forward to next year but for now there comes the responsibility of representing Tipperary in Munster and hopefully All-Ireland competition. Some might downplay the importance of such competitions at intermediate and junior level but speak to anyone from Kiladangan and they will tell you what their All-Ireland Intermediate title run in 2005 did for their club. I’m not saying Lorrha are going to go on and win it, but we’ll give it a right good go. One game at a time!