IAN O'RIORDANhears Tipperary manager Declan Ryan concede his side struggled with Kilkenny's physicality

NOTHING IS predictable about All-Ireland final day and yet Declan Ryan was always certain to be as humble and accepting in defeat as he would have been in victory.

It wasn’t just the realisation that the better team – or at least the team with more visible determination – had surely won out the day: the Tipperary manager was open to the confession that too many things didn’t go to plan for the defending champions, and with that the outcome was always pointing towards Kilkenny with their irrepressible desire to make amends for the defeat of 2010.

“Of course it’s a disappointing day,” said Ryan, not looking overly dejected for the same reasons he wouldn’t have looked overly buoyant had Tipperary won. Ryan doesn’t really do emotional highs or lows, although that’s not saying he wasn’t hurting deep inside.

“When you prepare as well as these guys prepared all year, it is disappointing when you don’t turn up with your A-game on the day. But then hats off to Kilkenny. They were the hungrier team on the day. That’s the way it looked from the sideline and probably from the stands too. We were lucky to be only five points down at half-time, really. We rejigged it a small bit at half-time. And I think the guys did themselves justice in the second half.

“But still Kilkenny always seemed the hungrier team. Unfortunately we were second best to Kilkenny which I think is testament to the fact they have set the standard since the late 1990s, and still are setting the standards.”

As a game it was always destined to be a physical battle as much as one of hurling skill and method, and in the end that is what ultimately won it for Kilkenny: no one could have predicted just how much Tipperary were out-muscled, and Ryan seemed a little baffled by it too. “Yeah, we were blown out of it in a couple of tackles. That’s maybe down to attitude and hunger. Kilkenny have shown over the last five years that they have savage hunger and they showed it today. We failed to cope with it early in the game, we got to grips with it somewhat in the second half.

“But Kilkenny also got their scores a bit handier, especially when we came back to three or four points. Once again they set the standard for us all. It’s up to the rest of us to follow that, try to reach it.”

At the same time Ryan found no fault in either Tipperary’s preparation or their approach to the game, except to say there will be some thinking required about where it did go wrong. “These guys have trained savagely hard. They’ve been like professionals almost. They’ve been training since the middle of January. You have to see how hard these guys have trained to believe it. I have no qualms with that end of things.

“We just didn’t get too many open goal opportunities today. We seemed to be bunched up in our forward line. We didn’t win enough breaking ball. We didn’t win enough primary possession. Again, it’s down to the physicality Kilkenny bring to the game and you either decide to match that or you don’t. We were second best in that regard today.

“Again, we were very lucky to be still in the game at half-time. We made a few changes at half-time and they improved the situation from our point of view.”

What definitely didn’t help their chances was the slow start, and going 16 minutes before Noel McGrath fired over their first point: “Well we haven’t done anything different today than we have done all year.

“For guys who have played so well and trained so hard over the last six to eight weeks it’s difficult to put a finger on it. But that slow start, yes, is something we’ll have to think about when we do look back on the game.”

Plenty of time for that over the long, dark months that soon close in fast after All-Ireland final day.