When you’re losing, you start to question a lot of things. You probably question too many things, when it comes right down to it. You analyse everything, to the point where you overanalyse them. By the time you’re finished, the danger is you convince yourself that things are worse than they actually are.
Outside influences play a part here. When you lose a championship game – and especially when you lose badly – everybody on the outside makes up their mind. The media, the supporters, the general public. They’re not interested in what you’re doing right. But they all have firm opinions on what you’re doing wrong.
I was at the Tipperary v Clare match a fortnight ago, sitting in the stand. The longer it went on, all I heard from Tipp supporters around me was a constant roar of, “Will ye drive it long! Will ye drive it long!” But the stats showed afterwards that Tipp lost 68 per cent of their long puck-outs.
Both Clare goals came from Tipperary puck-outs that were driven long into the Clare defence. Driving it long was actually one of the things that was hurting Tipp the most in that game, yet supporters were giving out that they weren’t doing enough of it.
Look at what Tipperary have. Would a long ball game suit Jake Morris? Would it suit Jason Forde?
It’s incredibly difficult for a team that’s in the middle of a bad run to keep all that out. You might not hear it on the pitch in the heat of battle, but the subs hear it and the management hear it. And in the days that follow a bad loss, it spreads out into the public and all the general talk around the team.
You need a lot of trust within the group to overcome that. You need to reaffirm what the gameplan is, what the basics of what you’re trying to do are and what has worked well in training. If you start getting swayed by all the noise from outside, confidence starts to suffer and things start to fall apart even more.
Fundamentally, your gameplan has to suit the players you have. The great Kilkenny team had brilliant ball-winning forwards so they drove the ball long to find them. The Cork team that had all those great battles with them knew they couldn’t compete on those terms so they ran the ball and passed it short. The Clare team that won in 2013 got the ball on the ground and used the speed of their players to compete there. The way Limerick play now suits what they have.
Look at what Tipperary have. Would a long ball game suit Jake Morris? Would it suit Jason Forde? Noel McGrath is a brilliant hurler but do Tipp really want him spending his afternoon fighting in the air for puck-outs? I don’t think that would make a lot of sense.
The forwards available to Tipperary right now are players who want to win the second ball rather than the first. They can score from tight angles, they’re very accurate when the chance arises, they don’t need time to size up where the posts are. Those are all great qualities to have but you have to get them in position first and you won’t do that by lumping long high ball down on top of them.
Any assessment of where Tipp find themselves has to start with the players they have lost. Seamie Callanan was a fantastic target man but he’s injured. Bonner Maher is a huge presence under the high ball but he’s still only finding his way back after injury. Bubbles O’Dwyer is missing as well – a brilliant finisher but someone with a physical presence too. Niall O’Meara, another man who is good in the air when he plays. Why would you want to drive it long to a forward unit without those guys in it?
The news came this week that John McGrath is out for the season and Forde will miss the Limerick game too. These are massive losses for any time to try and put up with. You’re talking about All-Ireland winners, All Stars, match-winners. That’s a massive hurdle for Tipperary to overcome.
That’s before you even mention Brendan and Pádraic Maher, who are arguably the worst losses of all. Even aside from their hurling ability, that’s huge experience gone from the panel. And on a very basic level, Tipp have lost serious hurling brainpower from the middle of the pitch. You could nearly live with some of the losses in the forwards if you still had that calibre of player available where the two Mahers did their work.
The influence of guys with an elite hurling brain around the middle third is enormous. Look at somebody like Davy Burke for Galway. What he does in an organisational sense never shows up in a stat and would never be obvious to anyone sitting in the stands. It doesn't show up on a GPS. But it's so crucial.
Cian Lynch and Declan Hannon do it for Limerick. They organise, they move lads around, the cover off space. Brendan and Paudie Maher did that for Tipp for the past decade. Even just vocally, they were commanding what happened on the pitch in a way that most people wouldn't even see.
In the heat of battle, you need players who will solve that on the pitch in real time. Do we go man to man on them? Is that what they want us to do?
That part of the pitch is the battleground in intercounty hurling. It’s where games are won and lost. If you don’t have experienced players with good hurling brains in and around the centre, it’s very hard to get any momentum.
Those are the players who see a step ahead. They have a sharper sense than other players of where the space is. If it needs to be covered off, they spot that before it becomes a problem. If it’s opening up in an attacking sense, they spot that too. They’re always talking, co-ordinating, organising.
Players like that are so vital because they are so rare. Most players just concentrate on their own patch, they make sure that their man is covered and that takes up all their brainpower. You can say management should be the ones who ought to be able to organise from the sideline but that doesn’t work in a full house in Croke Park because you can’t hear the lad 10 yards away, never mind the manager over on the line. You need on-field organisers.
Limerick put four defenders into the full-back line for their puck-outs against Cork. Nobody was expecting it. In the heat of battle, you need players who will solve that on the pitch in real time. Do we go man to man on them? Is that what they want us to do? We can’t do nothing. You need to make a call and commit to it.
Brendan and Paudie Maher were great at managing all those fine details on the pitch. Getting players in the right spot for puck-outs. Knowing when to push up and when to sit off. Making decisions on the fly when the opposition showed them something they weren’t expecting. They were able to pass on information even just by pointing and using body language.
It's never a given that lads will be able to step up to senior. Everybody's different. Some need the older lads to bring them through
Paudie Maher was great at taking responsibility for the other defenders in his line. He positioned himself so he’d be able to constantly sweep in behind and cover his teammates when they went to compete for ball in the air. He had huge game intelligence to be able to do that and he was such a great team player because he gave the others real security in playing like that.
Anytime we played against Tipperary, we tried to use that against him. We knew that he would sit off a little to help sweep up possession and that it would leave maybe five yards of extra space at wing-forward. In the All-Ireland semi-final in 2017, I scored our last three points from play all from out around his position. It was no coincidence that we were able to engineer space in that area.
Losing the Mahers to retirement and all the other players to injury has left a massive hole for the Tipperary management to fill. I don’t buy this idea that because they have had success at minor and under-20 level, they should be able to slot a heap of young lads in now and carry on without missing a beat. It doesn’t work like that.
I was on Galway teams that played in three All-Ireland minor finals in a row. Each one of those squads had about 30 players coming in and out of the panels so you're talking about 80-90 hurlers over the space of three seasons. By my count, the only ones who went on to have lengthy, sustained intercounty careers were James Skehill, Aidan Harte, Davy Burke and me. Four players out of 90.
It’s never a given that lads will be able to step up to senior. Everybody’s different. Some need the older lads to bring them through. Some will thrive in a team that isn’t doing well where they will see their chance. Others will thrive in a successful team where the culture is competitive.
The one thing that is certain is that managers won't throw young lads in if they don't think they're as good as what's already there. I know Liam Sheedy took a bit of stick through his second stint for not blooding all these young Tipperary players. But you can be sure that he picked the players that were the best in training.
There’s no experimenting in championship – you get your best players on the pitch and you go and win the battle. If the numbers 16-to-32 in the panel get the sense that you’re playing somebody who hasn’t been doing it in training just because you think he’ll be a good player a few years down the line, they’ll stop pulling their weight. Everyone has to feel like they’re getting a fair crack.
Some of those younger Tipperary players haven’t been able to force their way in until now. That was just how the cards fell for them along the way. It’s a tough situation they’re in now and Limerick is probably the worst place they could be going on Sunday. I can’t see them getting much out of the game and I would fear a little for them.
Even with a few injury concerns themselves, I wouldn’t be too surprised if Limerick went to town on Tipperary here.
