By John Harrington

Tipperary full-forward Michael Quinlivan knows exactly what to expect from the Mayo full-back line in Sunday’s All-Ireland SFC Semi-Final.

He had a bird’s eye view of how physical and ruthless they can be when he watched their All-Ireland Quarter-Final victory over Tyrone in Croke Park from a high vantage point on Hill 16.

And what struck him most is that he and his Tipperary team-mates had better be prepared for some big-hits and raw aggression.

“The physicality of the game was just on another level,” says Quinlivan. “It was very interesting to watch, very interesting to watch. Mayo's big players stood up when it mattered, that was the overriding feeling that I took from it anyway.

“I actually just enjoyed the game. The scores in it were phenomenal. Lee Keegan's point with his left leg, under that sort of pressure, is one of the best scores of the Championship. The one on the loop from Cillian O'Connor as well, an absolute monster.

“There was a lot of impressive performances on the Mayo side. There's no denying that and we obviously do have our work cut out to try and curb the influence of a few of them players.”

It’ll be interesting to see how Mayo will try to curb Quinlivan’s influence. He’s the focal point of this Tipperary attack, and if they can manage to subdue him then a victory for the Connacht side would seem inevitable.

There’s a good chance they’ll pay him the same respect they did Tyrone’s Sean Cavanagh by detailing their best defender, Lee Keegan, to man-mark him.

Quinlivan had a good view of just how doggedly Keegan stuck to Cavanagh, so he knows he’ll have a hard match ahead of him if Mayo got with the same defensive system on Sunday.

“Yeah, it was tight but look you take it as it comes. I marked Chrissy McKaigue against Derry and it was the same. It is a different challenge whatever day you take to the field. It’s about keeping your head.

They probably have a plan for two or three of our players who have been to the fore over the last while. We obviously feel we have quality that can hurt them. I don’t think I won’t be getting wrapped. Hopefully I won’t have the same end.”

Tipperary play a really exciting brand of attacking football and should be able to compete with Mayo when it comes to pure skill. They’ll have to play smart too in order to win this game. Because, as Quinlivan, admits they’re unlikely to be able to better Mayo if the contest is defined by attrition and physicality.

“They're a lot bigger than us, yeah they are. They've been at this level now for, what is it, six years -in-a-row they've been at an All-Ireland semi-final. They're well used to this end of the Championship, it's our first year. We're a bit green and our conditioning mightn't be like Division One level because we've a lot of young guys who have just come through.”

Sunday’s Semi-Final is the first time that Tipp have faced Division One opposition in this Championship campaign since they were well-beaten by Kerry in the Munster Final. Quinlivan admits they were out-fought and out-thought that day, but is hopeful they can put the lessons learned from that experience to good effect against Mayo.

“We didn't expect...I thought the work rate of their forward line really put us under huge pressure. Maybe they identify the fact that our backs were comfortable on the ball and stop the supply coming in. Paul Geaney and Steven O'Brien and Darran O'Sullivan were probably their three hardest working players on the field I thought.

“They'd loads of turnovers as well, for an inside forward line that's out of this world. Maybe they targeted that and when they really did kick, we struggled a small bit. You look at the quality they're bringing off the bench.

“You've a footballer of the year and a pile of All-Stars. For us going into our first Munster final, we knew it was going to be a big challenge albeit that we didn't perform to the level that we wanted to.

“I think we were a bit worked up before the Kerry game, it being our first Munster final and that bit of…it wasn’t even nerves it was more just the occasion and it probably got to us a small bit and we didn’t really play to our potential so we were a lot more relaxed for our last two games and if we can be as relaxed against Mayo I think that will probably stand to us.”

Tipperary’s game-plan will be relatively straight-forward on Sunday – they’re going out to attack Mayo. All of their players are very comfortable in possession so expect to see defenders bombing forward to join the attack whenever possible. They’re playing a brand of football that suits them, and Quinlivan believes manager Liam Kearns deserves credit for giving them the licence to do so and moulding a winning team.

"The resolve he’s shown from the start of the year," says Quinlivan. "The amount of set-backs he’s had to look at as a manager, the lads we’ve lost and then obviously losing the lads from my club for the first couple of games of the league.

“We probably couldn’t get the work done during the league that we might have done in January to change our game a small bit, but since the start of May we’ve altered our game-plan a small little bit and found a style that’s suited us.

“A lot of the game-plans now in the GAA are just carbon copies of things that people have seen in other teams rather than actually looking at their own players and seeing what their strengths are and I think we’ve found a thing that does suit our strengths. We’re very pacey and we’re very comfortable on the ball.”

Tipp might play with more freedom than most teams, but they’re not just ‘give it a lash’ merchants. They’re tactically astute, and a feature of their preparation for every match they play has been the level of homework they’ve done on the opposition.

Galway’s Gary Sice said after the quarter-final he had his team-mates were taken aback by the level of knowledge Tipp had on their preferred tactics, and Quinlivan admits they put a lot of effort into that aspect of their preparation.

“We have a very, very good backroom team and the lads who have put in a huge effort throughout the year, especially the likes of Tommy Toomey, Brian Lacey and Michael Burns,” he says.

“When we got to look at our opposition and see where we can hurt them they’ve been on the money so I’m sure Mayo will probably throw out something different having read the comments now and it could all be blown back in our face.

“But we’ve been happy with the level that we’re at so far and hopefully we can keep at that level going into the next day.”

Whatever happens on Sunday, Tipperary should have laid a foundation this year on which they can build in the coming seasons. The players who opted out of the panel for 2016 will surely be encouraged to return, and the young players coming through their well-organised development structures will have been inspired by the senior team’s achievement of reaching an All-Ireland semi-final.

“I am there five years, and a lot of the lads that were there in year one with me are gone, there are probably only 10 or 12 left,” says Quinlivan.

“Hopefully, this is the start of this team taking another step. Our legacy will be what comes behind us and whether they commit to playing football. I think a lot more people will see it as a more attractive proposition now because of the year we had.

“But we want to get back to another quarter-final next year, or another Munster final. That would be progression for us. At the moment, it is all about next Sunday. We will have time enough to look back on that in November and December when we are reviewing our year.”

They’ve exceeded expectations by making it his far and most expect their fairy-tale to come to an end on Sunday, but Quinlivan is adamant that Tipperary are going into this match confident they can cause another big shock.

“I think you go into every game and at the end of the day if you're not going in there 100 per cent certain that you can win, then you're beat before you even go onto the field. I think that was something that we were missing maybe for the last few years,” he says.

“We always had maybe seven or eight who always thought that, but until you get 30 of your panel thinking that way then you can really believe you can do things.

“I think the confidence that we've gained from the last few games, you know, we're obviously under no illusions, we're not naive enough to think it's going to be handed to us. There's no doubt about that. But, yeah, look, we have belief that we can hurt them. And we'll see where that takes us.”