Jason Forde plans to remain part of the Tipperary senior hurling panel for 2026.

Forde (31) is one of the longest serving players in the current squad having made his senior debut in 2013.

But the Silvermines man hopes to be back in blue and gold next season as Liam Cahill’s charges attempt to retain the Liam MacCarthy Cup, something the Premier County last achieved in 1964-65.

“I suppose we’re in the middle of the club championship and stuff like that, but I’m sure I’ll be meeting with Liam in the next couple of weeks and yeah, look, you’d be obviously willing and hopefully able to go again,” says Forde.

“But I suppose that’s a conversation that you’d have to have with Liam and the management team first and see, but yeah, I’d definitely be raring to go for next year.

“When you’re winning, the age profile of the team and you’ve just come off such a high, it would be hard to leave that behind.

“So, once the body’s good and you are injury free, why not stay at it as long as you can because when you do close the door on it, that’ll be it. You’ll be gone and you won’t be coming back.”

Not many were backing Tipp to stage a comeback at half-time in last July’s All-Ireland final when they trailed Cork by six points.

However, in one of the most extraordinary second-half displays in All-Ireland final history, Tipperary took total control of the contest to win by 15 points.

“The was no real panic at half-time, lads just came in and got their bit of fuel and just sat down,” recalls Forde.

“There wasn’t a whole pile of talking done for the first few minutes and then I suppose management came back in and kind of made one or two little changes, that was literally it.

“We still felt we were playing well. We were six points down, fair enough, but we felt like we were hurling quite well so there was no real massive panic. There were one or two little positional changes and the thing just kind of clicked for us then.”

It was Forde’s third All-Ireland triumph with Tipperary having previously picked up medals in 2016 and 2019.

“To come from where we came from in 2024, just to get back to Croke Park first off, and get out of Munster, but to actually go on and win it then, I think a lot of lads referenced it over the last few weeks, it is kind of the stuff of dreams.”

One of the big tactical talking points after the final was Tipp’s decision to break with tradition and deploy a sweeper. Bryan O’Mara’s role as a plus one seemed to catch Cork by surprise and was a significant factor in the Premier County’s triumph.

But while the decision seemed to surprise many, Forde says it didn’t cause much hullabaloo when first mentioned within the Tipp dressingroom.

“No, I wasn’t shocked, to be honest. A lot of the Tipperary teams I’ve played on since I came in, I don’t think we’ve ever kind of gone with a plus one ourselves.

“But we’ve found ourselves in that situation a number of times where other teams have maybe deployed a sweeper and you end up with an extra back.

“So for a lot of lads, it probably wasn’t anything new. Bryan O’Mara has played that role for UL (University of Limerick) for a good number of years and he’s well equipped to do it because he’s such an athlete. So no, I wasn’t shocked with it.

“[Cork] opened us up for goals in the league final and in the Munster championship so we had to do something to try and counteract that. Bryan played it superbly well, he covered off that side of the field and mopped up a lot of ball. I just think it was really clever from the lads.”

The never-ending debate on the scheduling of the intercounty season has been reheated again in recent days after Central Council supported a proposal to push the All-Ireland finals back to either side of the August bank holiday. Congress delegates will vote in February on whether to green light those plans.

But Forde would rather the finals remain in July.

“Personally speaking, I’d be a big fan of the way the split season is. The split season gives the club players a lot of clarity on when they’re going to be playing matches, when they can book holidays, things like that,” he says.

“I think it’s really important that you have that bit of clarity. Even for ourselves, the last three rounds of the county championship that we played, the games have been played in good weather.

“The attendances all around the county have been excellent, I think that just shows that it is working. I like the way things are running at the minute.”

♦ Forde was speaking at the launch of ‘Fuel your Game’, after Safefood and the GAA teamed up to produce a new free healthy eating resource to help juvenile players, parents and coaches in choosing the right foods to support their Gaelic games activity and overall health and wellbeing.