20-05-2025
Liam Sheedy: What Tipperary management have done with Robert Doyle is 'off the charts'
Liam Sheedy likes the look of Tipperary defensively this year. He also believes this team is more capable of doing damage in the All-Ireland series compared to the last time they progressed beyond the Munster Championship in 2023.
"It's the way we won in Ennis when it looked like it was getting away from them, that was massive for the group," the two-time All-Ireland winning Tipperary manager told Dalo's Hurling Show, an Irish Examiner podcast.
"The last few years, one win in 14 was what you were looking at coming into these games. There was a lot of scepticism about it.
"Liam (Cahill) has found a lot of energy and he's got a group defensively who can quench fires, a good physical presence and Eoghan Connolly's ability to hit long range frees is a real string to his bow.
"Robert Doyle, marking Tony Kelly and Dessie Hutchinson, he's more or less put them to sleep. For a young lad who played up front with Clonoulty, what the management team have done with him is off the charts.
"Waterford only scored 11 points in the second half. They have Dessie Hutchinson, Stephen Bennett, Jamie Barron - a good set of forwards - 11 points and the breeze was with them. I thought Tipp played really well defensively."
Six years after he arrived on the inter-county scene, Sheedy thinks Jake Morris has "really come of age" this season.
"Four points against Waterford (on Sunday)," said Sheedy. "Waterford, no matter who they sent to mind him, they couldn't mind him, they couldn't manage his movement. Andrew Ormond, he came on as a sub against Cork and tried really hard but the last two games... He came in in '21, was around the group but never really featured, but to see where he is now... The Clare match gave him massive confidence.
"Jason (Forde), John (McGrath), some of them didn't find their flow yesterday but when you put them in the collective, they are working really hard. I think they got 10 points in total from turnovers (against Waterford)."
With a little over two minutes of normal time to play at Semple Stadium on Sunday, Waterford's second surge of the game had reduced Tipperary's advantage to just three points. Then Oisín O'Donoghue found the back of the net to kill off the contest. Sheedy praised Darragh McCarthy's decision-making to create the goal.
"When he was going in, you're wondering what was the best chance we have of getting a goal? He worked it out and said Oisín O'Donoghue was the best chance and he gave it off to him," said Sheedy.
"There are some other forwards in the country who would me thinking 'me' and wouldn't be thinking 'team'. That shouldn't go unnoticed; his unselfishness is unbelievable, and it's a great example to the rest of the team that a guy 20 years young is able to make those types of decisions in the heat of battle of the Munster Championship."
Sheedy believes that reaching an All-Ireland semi-final, considering the "maturity of the group with the new faces", would be real progress for Tipperary.
