Hurling & Camogie

Victorious Tipperary savour the moment

Tipperary captain Brendan Maher, Liam MacCarthy Cup in hand, leads team-mates in celebration on the Croke Park pitch. Picture: Colm O’Reilly 
Tipperary captain Brendan Maher, Liam MacCarthy Cup in hand, leads team-mates in celebration on the Croke Park pitch. Picture: Colm O’Reilly  Tipperary captain Brendan Maher, Liam MacCarthy Cup in hand, leads team-mates in celebration on the Croke Park pitch. Picture: Colm O’Reilly 

STUCK in the cold, soulless environs of the media room at Croke Park on Sunday afternoon, the sound of his victorious players belting out chorus after chorus of ‘champiooonayyys, champiooonayys’ sneaking under the door, you couldn’t have blamed Michael Ryan for wanting to get back to the party as soon as possible.

Instead, the Tipperary boss had all the time in the world. Having been part of the backroom team under Eamon O’Shea as Tipp fell to Kilkenny time after pain-staking time, Ryan was going to enjoy this moment.

There alongside Liam Sheedy when the Liam MacCarthy Cup last visited the Premier county six long Septembers ago, yesterday finally saw the good times come back – and the fact they did it against a Kilkenny team gunning for three All-Ireland titles in-a-row made it all the sweeter.

But Ryan insisted the hurt caused by those defeats to the Cats in recent years had played only a minor part in helping his team reach the promised land.

“It’s overdone to be honest,” he said when asked whether they had drawn on past pain.

“Yeah they hurt, mother of God they did hurt, but you move on. You can’t live your life looking over your shoulder. Today was a brand new day, it was there to be played.

“Sometimes history can be a burden, you’ve got to put it in its place. Take what you can from it, learn from it, but confine it to history after that.

“Those guys have opened up a whole new chapter for themselves and they’re going to absolutely relish the chance to come back and do something again in 2017.”

It was the much-feted full-forward line of Seamus Callanan, John O’Dwyer and John McGrath that did the damage on Sunday, scoring all but eight of Tipp’s 2-29 total. In the second half in particular, they were unstoppable at times.

Joey Holden will have nightmares over Callanan, who finished up with 0-13, nine of which came from play. An impressive haul on any day, never mind an All-Ireland final, and his manager led the tributes to the Drom & Inch star.

Ryan said: “Nine points [from play]? That’s not too bad. He’s certainly not going to get given out to, that was fine. We’ll take that.

“Look, he’s a quality player. Nine points is outrageous, it’s a savage contribution. He epitomised the work-rate that was going on up there – to a man they were working exceptionally hard, and that was the key for us today.”

For Kilkenny boss Cody, it was only the fourth time in 15 All-Ireland finals that he had found himself having to explain why his team lost, rather than celebrating victory. And despite the loss of the inspirational Michael Fennelly in the semi-final replay win over Waterford, there were no excuses.

“The better team wins the game and the better team won the day,” he said.

“No excuses, no ‘if only this had happened, if only that had happened’. There was nothing in it at half-time essentially, we got a good start to the second half, we got a goal, we didn’t drive it on after that.

“When they got their goal they did drive it on and they were very, very good. That’s the way it went.”