Ryan laments Tipp’s growing injury list

By James Hayden

Tipperary manager Philly Ryan cut a disappointed figure in the wake of his side’s ten-point loss to Limerick following their Allianz National Football League Round 5 clash in Rathkeale on Saturday night.

Ryan admitted that his side were off the mark against a Limerick side who really pushed on in the second half, but he also lamented the growing list of injuries to Tipperary players and the knock-on effect it is having on their promotion aspirations.

“We were off the mark tonight and the scoreboard doesn't lie,” Ryan began.

“Unfortunately, we were way behind the pace of the game tonight. I can't explain why, we were in the game and then Sean O’Connor our main marksman goes down.

“We have had an awful run of injuries; we lost a couple of lads this week. And we're not getting them back as quickly as we'd like.”

Ryan admitted that the loss of Luke Boland in the second half also coupled with the fact that captain Steven O’Brien still remains out with injury meant his side were without a number of their leaders.

“Yeah, look, we can't afford to lose those leaders, because we need everybody and that bit of experience on the field,” he added.

“It's just knock after knock, but we're going to keep the heads up. We always knew this was going to be a difficult year and was never going to be easy. We lost a lot of lads out of the panel, but we’ll plug away, and we’ll keep the heads up and keep driving on. We said from the outset that it's not about this year and that it's going to be a long-term project.”

Ryan added: “They (Limerick) probably had those players that are used to playing and they also played Division 3 last year, which may be higher level than the lads are used to playing. We are trying to put a panel together, trying to put a squad of 36 or 37 players and look, a lot of them are young and there is a lot of youth in there, but we still have two league games to go, and we would be looking for a couple of points from those games.”

Ryan also admitted that back-to-back defeats to London and Limerick have all but ended Tipp’s promotion hopes.

“We would have looked into it a couple of weeks ago maybe, and probably flirted with it a small bit, but it’s not there.

“We'll be looking to build into the Tailteann Cup and that’s what we will be aiming for, and we will also be looking into next year too. We have a lot of good young lads coming off the under 20 squad and they will back up this panel.”

In terms of the positives from the game, Ryan admitted it was great to get the three goals.

"The idea coming into the game was to follow the ball in as much as we could tonight and to try and put as much pressure as we could on the Limerick goalkeeper. It worked at times, but we weren’t fluent enough,” he added.

“We lost Conor Fahey at half-time to injury, we lost Sean O’Connor before half-time, and we weren’t getting to grips with their kick outs when we should have been.”

Regarding the depth of Tipp’s panel Philly admitted that the experience is just not there at present.

“At present, we don't have the experience we have bodies, but we don't have the experience. The lads that we have left on the bench, some are coming back from injuries, and some are just not experienced at this level, but we will be pushing them into the next game or two to see where they are at.”