It is Cork's time to end 20-year All-Ireland drought against Tipperary – but new tactic can give Liam Cahill's men hope

The Irish Sun

20-07-2025

CORK are on the brink of ending their famine but they have to finish the job today and gobble up Tipperary.
The aching hunger has not gone away after the Rebels
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Babs Keating gave his verdict on the All-Ireland hurling final
Credit: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
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Cork have not won Liam MacCarthy since 2005
Credit: Brendan Moran / SPORTSFILE
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Tipperary are in their first final since 2019
Credit: Seb Daly/Sportsfile
They have endured 12 months of pain since that defeat after extra-time at
The names are all the same but this is a different and even more ravenous team coming back to march behind the Artane Band this afternoon.
Now is the time for
So many people are putting this team on a pedestal but that's not the way I'd see it.
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And as one of their own, I'll tell you: Tipperary are hungry too.
Yes,
Going back to the Munster
Championship
meeting between today's finalists, Tipp played the entire game with 14 men after
The Rebels won the game by 15 points but they only won the second half by four as Liam Cahill's men hassled and harried and never gave in.
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In the rest of the Munster campaign, our performance against Clare was equal to Cork's effort against the Banner and both teams drew with Limerick after 70 minutes too, with the Rebels
From the All-Ireland semi- finals, the
Watch RTE pundits' contrasting reaction to full-time whistle of Tipperary's epic win over Kilkenny
Any other defence in the country would have maybe shipped one or two of those green flags, not even close to all seven. I'd say Cork couldn't believe their luck.
But they were given chances and took them and that's the first worry I have from a Tipp perspective.
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A bad
And I just think that the way Cork are playing at the moment, they're a lot slicker than what Kilkenny had to offer.
Because they offered nothing in the half-forward line whereas Pat Ryan's team are working like a machine up front.
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If I was in Cahill's position I would adopt a new strategy that we haven't seen from this Tipp team in recent years — and that's to lower the blade.
Going back to 1964 when we were facing a Kilkenny team that had won an All-Ireland a year earlier, our full-back line was aging.
When I say aging, John Doyle was at it for 15 years at that stage and he had six All-Irelands.
Mick Maher was there with three and the majority of the team had been on the go for a decade — Theo English, Seán McLaughlin, John McKenna, Donie Nealon and all that gang.
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The word was the Kilkenny full-forward line were speed merchants and I remember John Doyle saying before the game that we'd have to lower the blade.
It was an old
farming
expression that you had to go deep down to cut the corn.
And that was his way of expressing how we had to deal with the speed that Kilkenny had to offer.
We lowered the blade in that final and won 5-13 to 2-8. Our backs were ravenous.
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EXPERIENCED HEADS
Cahill needs that from Ronan Maher, Bryan O'Mara and Craig Morgan today.
But whether they have enough craft, experience and knowledge to do it against Alan Connolly, Shane Barrett, Brian Hayes, Declan Dalton or anybody that might come in after that remains to be seen.
Then you're talking Shane Kingston, you're talking Conor Lehane, Séamus Harnedy is named as a sub — Cork have far more experience on their bench than Tipp do.
And lowering the blade applies to everybody on the field because I learned at a very early stage that sometimes a forward has to play like a back and a back has to play like a forward.
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Now, you don't learn that in the two weeks before an All-Ireland. That's drilled into you at your club and it's drilled into you at training.
From a forward's point of view, you can't let a half-back in particular deliver the sliotar into the forward line and get the time to place that ball.
Ciarán Joyce, Rob Downey and Mark Coleman have been brilliant in that regard for the Rebels. It's vital and you play the ball into your half-forward line it as if the
lotto
numbers are on it.
I'm just afraid that our lads might be lacking enough experience to upset that strong Cork half-back line.
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REAL UNIT
Robert Downey and his brother Eoin behind him at full-back are probably unbeatable in the air right now and Cork are playing as a real unit.
The last two years they've blended and improved every day and are more of a team in sync than ever under Ryan. So, I'd be just concerned that it's going to take Tipperary another year or so to learn the ingredients that are required on All-Ireland day.
Putting young Oisín O'Donoghue into the game against Kilkenny was a
stroke
of genius and the goal he got was spectacular.
How he got that shot away with four Kilkenny players around him I'll never know — but I think only he and Noel McGrath can deliver that sort of threat from the Tipperary bench.
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One of the hard facts of life is how difficult it is to win an All-Ireland. Nobody needs to tell Cork that.
They were in this spot last year and know how hard it is after losing the decider to Clare.
All the young players we have in Tipp, they just have a bit to go in that regard while Cork are well down the
road
.
Sometimes the best
medicine
you can get is losing a final.
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I'm sure it has haunted Cork for the last 12 months.
With the 20 years of hunger and the support they have at the moment, the expectancy on them is massive to banish that wait for Liam MacCarthy.
To finish, I have to say I favour Cork mainly because of the bench they have.
A relatively inexperienced Tipp must lower the blade but Cork simply have to finish a job they've been waiting 20 years to do.
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Tipp's time will come. Cork's time is now.