TIPPERARY MANAGER John Evans has criticised Limerick’s tactics in the second half of Sunday’s Munster senior football championship first round in Thurles. Evans’s team just failed to overhaul an early nine-point deficit before going down by two points.

Trailing by just three in the final 10 minutes, Tipperary’s late charge came up short but Evans was critical of what he felt were time-wasting tactics by the opposition as the clock ran down

“That was experience by Mickey Ned (O’Sullivan, Limerick manager) and Donie Buckley, who went on to the field several times. There must have been about half a dozen boxes of contact lenses being distributed and guys were going down and killing the game and the goalkeeper was holding up the ball.

“There were two balls in the goal and then he went 35 yards for another ball and brought it back. The whole thing was slowed down to kill our momentum.

“I thought it a little unfair of Mickey Ned to say that they lost their composure. I thought ‘let’s give a little credit where credit is due’. Our lads did fight back gallantly after all but I’m not going to get involved in a war of words.”

O’Sullivan declined to respond to the comments when contacted by this newspaper.

Tipperary, who were favourites going into the match after a successful league campaign that saw them promoted for the second time in successive seasons, had to wait until the 32nd minute for their first score and by then the task of rescuing the match had become almost impossible.

Evans felt that they had frozen in the circumstances of what was a reasonable turnout for a fixture between the teams.

“They’re a young team who never played in front of a crowd of four or five hundred, never mind four or five thousand so it was a bit of stage fright I suppose.”

He refused to blame the league campaign, which culminated in the Division Three title, for having taken something out of the team ahead of the championship although he conceded that a flurry of Player of the Month awards in March for players Ciarán McDonald and Hugh Coghlan might have taken the edge of the team’s hunger.

But Evans was insistent that climbing the league ladder is an imperative for teams in development. “We’re building a whole new team and if you are doing that the only realistic platform is to try and get the team up the divisions and from there attack the championship.

“I can’t have butter on both sides of my bread by saving players for the championship during the league and expecting them to develop their teamwork, their skill, their experience of better teams and the knowledge of how best to prepare.

“When it comes to the white heat of championship I think in due course this very, very young team will respond.”

Next up is the qualifiers series, due to start in the first weekend in July. Tipperary haven’t done terribly well in the qualifiers since its introduction, at one stage even failing to fulfil a fixture and scratching. Evans, however, is quick to point out that the past is not an indicator of how the current team will approach the challenge.

“People have been quick to say that Tipperary don’t do well in the qualifiers but this is a new team.

They go back to their clubs for a small bit, do a bit of training with me and then we’ll start cranking it up again in a couple of weeks time and have a cut of the qualifiers.”

Tonight

LeinsterU-21 HC: Kildare v Dublin, Clane, 7.30pm; Leinster JFC:Meath v Longford, Pairc Tailteann, 7.30pm.