Tipp can’t get too hung up on Limerick hoodoo

Killinan End

Aspects of Tipp’s performance in Limerick were encouraging. The team was competitive throughout, appears to have a reliable free-taker, and put up a decent score. The concern might be the concession of seventeen points in the second-half – had a goal gone in it could have developed into a sizeable beating easily enough. There also is the reality that Limerick were without many important players. It can be safely said at this stage that for all the progress of Cork and Clare in the last few years Limerick remain the team to beat if they can keep all their players available, uninjured, and on the pitch for the duration of the game.

Much is made of Tipperary’s record against Limerick but in reality, competing against Limerick is just a small part of what would represent progress for our county. Limerick do not have to be beaten to get into the top three in Munster. Cork reached an All-Ireland Final last year despite losing two games in Munster. In 2023 Limerick won just two of their four games in the province. The heights Tipp can reach against other opposition will probably be more important than what happens against Limerick. All that said, the team showed great resilience when under the pump and could have slid to a big defeat if fainter of heart.

None of that is to underplay the defeat but as an exercise in rehabilitation and a learning opportunity for many young players it was an important day. There was a familiar nature to some of it, but it is capable of positive interpretation and, as already said, it is not as if Limerick and Limerick alone are impediments to our potential progress. Cork haven’t beaten Clare home or away in six attempts over the past three championships and National Leagues and yet little is made of that pattern.

It sets up Tipperary very nicely with a fortnight’s break between all remaining League games with Cork, Kilkenny (away) and Clare left, all of whom will provide searching tests ahead of the championship. The management must be delighted with how it has all gone so far and with how the next six weeks will unfold. Whatever potential is in the Tipp team will have every chance to develop and gain traction in the tests ahead while the games under the belt already have at least provided the desirable outcomes – wins over teams that were not great, with honour saved and ground stood against the best team in the country.

Limerick turn their thoughts to Nowlan Park in the next round and what should be a very interesting game. Kilkenny have looked very mixed so far, impressing in parts against Clare but losing to Galway as soon as the Corribsiders decided to raise a gallop. The Black and Amber might well face Tipp in a later round looking to avoid a clean sweep of home defeats. Their performance against an abysmal Wexford has not been greeted well in Kilkenny – a game which, in times past, would have seen the Model County put to the sword unmercifully from the position of such a half-time deficit. In this case the past is indeed a foreign country, and our Leinster neighbours certainly have daunting challenges in developing a team sufficiently powerful to take advantage of provincial benefits.

The same weekend Tipp will host Cork at Semple Stadium in another barometer of general health. Last time we played them there in early summer it was a defensive horror show in spite of the traditional notion that the teams always bring out the best in each other. Indeed, it was not without precedent either. Half a century ago Tipp trekked to the Mardyke for a League game with the Cork Athletic Grounds under renovation at the time. Just eight months later, the spanking new Páirc Uí Chaoimh was officially opened and a week after Cork and Tipp faced off in the championship.

Only six Tipp players survived the cull all the way to the championship team after what was described in the Cork Examiner as “lifeless” and “undistinguished” performance at the Mardyke. It was a team not named until the day of the match with Thurles Sarsfields, the previous year’s County champions, on tour in New York while Kilruane and Moneygall players prepared for a County Final. The disarray was punished by a sixteen-point drubbing administered by a Cork team with stars in every position.

This red wave would crash over the championship throughout the following three years while Tipp despaired from pillar to post, chopping and changing constantly to little avail. Nonetheless when they met in the championship in June 1976 the Rebel County scraped through only by the skin of their teeth. All goes to show that whatever the merits or otherwise of the compact season we have these days, the elongated National League starting in October and clashing with County Final season left something to be desired at times too.