Tipp's senior starlets in safe hands with goalkeeping great Cummins

Irish Examiner

2 days ago

Into the safe hands of Brendan Cummins Tipperary's senior starlets have gone these past couple of weeks and the U20 manager is indebted to Liam Cahill.
That may sound unusual seeing as the likes of Darragh McCarthy, Oisín O'Donoghue and Sam O'Farrell are fully qualified for the underage grade and an All-Ireland medal is on offer on Saturday, but Cummins considers them on loan from his old team-mate Cahill.
'No egos,' he says of their working relationship. 'That's a big help. They're senior hurlers in my view, the lads that we have, and we get them back to play U20 and we're very grateful.
'The biggest test was the Munster final with Sam O'Farrell and there was no way his workload would allow him to play three games in six or seven days. We were grateful that we had access to Sam for 15 minutes at the end of the game.
'The senior team is the priority team, like, and I know that from being part of it. Our job is to get players as quickly as possible through our experience ready to play senior hurling for Liam Cahill in the next couple of years.
'That is the job description, and if in the middle of that we can win something, great. The longer we stay in the championship, the more time we have with the players and the more time we have to develop them.
'We have got to the end of the road with them now the last two years, which has given us an extra couple of weeks of preparing for the big occasion and that experience helps. Every game in senior hurling is a big occasion.
'Me and Liam have a great relationship. There's never any hassle, never any problems because we're both driving to make sure Tipperary have the best players ready to play for the seniors and they're the flagship team.'
If last year's Munster title and All-Ireland final appearance came against the head, this season's achievements haven't. And yet after losing to Limerick on opening day, it appeared expectations had swallowed them up.
Cummins and his management team of Thomas Costello, Fintan O'Connor and Paddy Stapleton asked the players, 'What are you going to do about it?' The winning run that's followed has been quite the response.
'You want to build that bit of character and resolve. The group have a lot of that themselves so we wouldn't be taking a major credit for that, but the experience that we have from Fintan, Paddy and Tom has been helpful. They have seen all the highs and lows and the conversations they had with the players after the Limerick game certainly helped them to recalibrate for the next challenge, which was Cork away.
'Like everyone else, we were wondering, 'What's going on here?' and Limerick were way better than us on the night, the way they fought and chased. So, there were lessons to be learned. A bad experience is no good unless you learn from it and the group as a whole all learned from that night.'
Kilkenny have home advantage for this final but the crowds are back for Tipperary hurling. 'I'm sure Tipp supporters will come and get behind the players because there is a little bit of momentum building but sport is very fickle,' warns Cummins. 'You have to keep building. You can't ever rest. You're all the time trying to get more out of yourself.
'The senior hurlers, I know what they have been doing in the background, I know what Liam went through last year inside and outside the county. I'm delighted for him now that things are going well for him and the players have responded. There is momentum and it's our turn now to try and push it on a little bit.'
Cummins predicts Kilkenny will put in a ferocious challenge. 'I'm anticipating huge physicality, great structure in the way they play. Mark Dowling has done a massive amount of work with them and they will have a lot of hurt from last year when they lost to Offaly in Tullamore. They would have been disappointed with how it went like we were in the All-Ireland final.
'Both sides are well-matched physically and the way they are prepared to play and certainly Kilkenny handled Leinster really well. Dublin were coming into that final having beaten Offaly and Galway and were on a real high and Kilkenny just quenched them. Even in the first half against the wind and before the sending off, they were five or six up. There is going to be nothing in this game.'