MUNSTER SHC FINAL:YOU ALWAYS travel to a Munster final hoping for a classic which will fatten the legend of the fixture. More often than not you settle for something interesting and honest which holds your interest until the end. So it was yesterday.
Tipperary and Clare drew 48,076 paying customers to the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick and if they weren't quite riveted they were at least given enough entertainment to satisfy them and at least saw enough to make them wonder about the unfolding season.
Tipperary did more than enough to deserve their first Munster title since 2001, but more than that they added to the suspicion they might be genuine contenders this year when the big show moves to Croke Park.
For a side whose season finished last summer with a defeat to Wexford and unremitting acrimony and heartache the transformation has been phenomenal and must suggest to other sides that with the right attitude and coaching anything is possible.
Tipperary, unbeaten so far for the whole year, pretty much wrapped the Munster title up early with a flurry of well taken scores in the first half as Clare left their playbook back in the dressingroom.
While Tipp were working the ball around the place like a team working out with training cones, Clare were snapping at their chances and wasting them as quickly as they could create them.
Tipp and Clare both came under new management this season and their progress has been from well back in the provincial pecking order. Yesterday though, for much of the game, Clare regressed. A side which had surprised even itself by scoring 6-38 in two championship games to get here didn't just stop scoring goals, they stopped attempting to.
In the first half Clare midfielders and half forwards just shot on sight, making no attempt to utilise the two-man full forward line they were deploying. They had 10 wides before the break and almost as many balls fell short into the palm of Brendan Cummins. It was an odd tactical deviation from a successful formula and left them eight points adrift at half-time.
Through the league and into the Munster championship Tipp's form has continued to improve and they are now at the stage where they are reaping huge benefits in terms of the confidence they have. As several players said afterwards, this was less a Munster championship than a ticket to look at the big picture for the next five weeks rather than engage in the guerrilla warfare of the qualifiers.
"We have five weeks now" said Eoin Kelly "and we can look at the things we need to do to get ourselves right in those five weeks. We need to do things to make ourselves better. We can look at the bigger picture, get back to the grindstone and concentrate on the All-Ireland series."
"It'll be tough, all right," said Clare's captain Brian O'Connell of his own side's fate. "We came here to win and this is some knockback. We'll get back to training and look at the qualifiers but we will find it hard to pick it up. Time will tell."
Clare had laughed self-deprecatingly in the two previous rounds at their surprising ability to suddenly conjure up goals. Yesterday the bitter irony was they didn't score any and the two goals Tipperary scored either side of half time were instrumental in ending the game.
The first came when Séamus Callinan skinned Clare centre back Conor Plunkett for pace down the right wing and fired a stinging shot off his left side from 14 yards out. Clare were five points down at the time, having conceded three points on the trot, but their difficulties seemed far from terminal. Callinan's goal put a more serious complexion on their situation.
The second half started poorly for Clare with the concession of two more points but then they found a little rhythm of their own. Gerry Quinn, moved to centre back after Plunkett's departure, prompted Clare with a fine point and they picked off six more to establish dominance and get back to within five points of Tipperary.
And then lightning struck. A long puck out from Brendan Cummins came over the head of Clare wingback Patrick Donnellan into the palm of John O'Brien, who turned and accelerated like a precision engine before lashing the ball past Philip Brennan.
As simply as that Clare's revival movement was ended. As Tipp manager Liam Sheedy noted afterwards that period of the game was pivotal. "It may have looked easy to some people but it didn't feel easy. We needed John O'Brien's goal badly; Clare had us in trouble before that but they hadn't scored a goal. Suddenly we were pulling away."
Something in the bloodtype in counties like Tipperary aids that pulling away process. Within a minute O'Brien had added another point and suddenly Tipperary looked home and free and Clare were writhing on the canvas again.
Another Munster title to the Premier county and a credible challenge, perhaps, to Kilkenny later this summer. Sheedy's maiden year as manager has given Tipperary an impetus and freshness which few would have thought possible late last summer.
The Galway footballers surrendered themselves tamely last summer as well as Sligo escaped from the province on a rare foray into the big time. Yesterday a new manager worked the oracle for Galway as well. A one-point defeat of Mayo in a well-attended Connacht final in Castlebar advertised the health of the western game with one of the best matches of the year so far and saw Galway harvest at last some of the benefits of a thriving underage system.
A forward line conducted by the veteran Pádraic Joyce but staffed by younger stars did most of the damage to Mayo's chances in a blinding first half which brought two goals. Mayo rallied after the break but Galway did enough to survive the fraught closing stages.
QULAIFIERS PAHSE FOUR
GALWAY V CORK
WATERFORD V OFFALY
(Venue(s), times TBA, matches to be played next weekend)
