“Everybody has a view on how we should win this game,” says Eamon O’Shea, before stepping up from what is the last official round of interviews before tomorrow’s All-Ireland hurling final replay.

“And I always take counsel from everyone,” he adds, with a gentle smile.

It is more than just a moment of moderate and justifiable irony. O’Shea has been taking plenty of good counsel since taking charge of Tipperary two years ago, and yet one of the main reasons he got them to this year’s All-Ireland final in the first place is by not listening to the views of everybody.

Just over a year ago, not everybody but a lot of people in Tipperary were of the view that after their worst championship summer of the decade major changes were necessary. Lar Corbett? Seamus Callanan? Shane McGrath? Did they still have a part to play in Tipperary’s future?

This summer, even before the ball is thrown

in on Saturday evening, they’ve already contributed 9-66 between them, including the near unstoppable 7-45 from Callanan. Corbett put in a mesmerising 20-minute spell in the second half of the drawn game, racing his greyhound frame all about Croke Park and pointing twice, including one from a near impossible angle.

“He’s a good player,” says O’Shea, assessing Corbett’s performance the last day. “When the stakes are high good players play. What else can I say?”

There is no sentimental attachment to any of O’Shea’s decisions. Only trust. The same reason why O’Shea still has Eoin Kelly on the panel, 14 summers after making his debut.

Yet O’Shea also describes Tipperary as a team in transition. How much more transitioning has been done in the three weeks since the drawn game is uncertain, but considering five players started their first All-Ireland final the last day, that can only mean positive progression.

O’Shea suggests that nothing about the drawn game surprised him, least of all the fact that it was one of his defenders – Paddy Stapleton – who fired over one of the crucial endgame points.

“It only surprised me in the sense I was thinking, ‘Paddy, what the hell is he doing up there?’ But no, it didn’t surprise me that he put the ball over the bar. He plays out the field a lot and is always mad to get forward.

“In fairness that’s the way the game went. We were intent on fighting to the end . . . Both teams also went out to try to play the game, in as tough a way as you can. But I thought it was a very honest game and that was reflected in the absence of frees.”

Not that O’Shea completely dodges the question of how Tipperary are going to win this game: they conceded 3-22 to Kilkenny the first day, and even if both teams contributed to the highest-scoring 70-minute final in championship history, there’s no way they can afford to concede that again.

“Although it’s less important what I think,” he says. “It’s more important what my defenders think. They wouldn’t have been happy with some of the goals we conceded. But I don’t think, defensively, we were at sea. We were playing a really good Kilkenny team. Therefore you’re working really hard to close down an outstanding team. Sometimes it works and sometimes they get goals. You can’t dwell on it too much.”

There is another view that says Tipperary essentially won the draw the first day, and should have more of the momentum going into Croke Park tomorrow evening. Or should that be the other way round?

“I’d be concerned if the team felt it, but the team don’t feel it,” says O’Shea. “You just look at it, from the point of view of the management and see what you can do better. That’s what the focus is on; how you can get a little bit better. You tend not to think about the match as other people see it.”