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Hurling

hurling

Callanan says under-fire Tipp hurlers are doing their best

Seamus Callanan

Seamus Callanan

By John Harrington

Few counties do post-mortems like Tipperary after defeat in a hurling championship match.

Such is the level expectancy in the county, that when the players fall short of them they know that the critics in the county will come for them with whetted blades.

Seamus Callanan has been dealing with that reality for a long time now so the fall-out from the Munster SHC Quarter-Final defeat to Cork didn’t surprise him.

But that doesn’t mean he has an easy answer for why there’s generally an over-reaction to a championship defeat in Tipperary.

“I don’t know why that is, I don’t know why the reason is,” he says.

“I suppose there is maybe an expectancy that we’ll win every game and when we don’t there is obviously a backlash.

“We’d set sights for ourselves that we’d win every day that you go out. Ultimately you have to give Cork credit, they are a fabulous team.

“And Galway, they are flying this year, so our two defeats were against teams that really performed and there is no shame in that either.

“Look, there is big expectancy and that, we’re doing our best, you know.”

No-one hurts more after a defeat than the players themselves, so sharp criticism from outside the group can tend to feel like salt being applied to wounds.

“It can be, people don’t understand maybe what’s going on in training and how hard we are actually working,” says Callanan.

“Obviously defeat is difficult but there has to be a stage where you park the defeat and you move on and the Qualifier route is our route now and that’s all we can focus on.

“When you are winning people don’t give you too much hassle but when you are losing, look, in fairness everybody wants the best and everybody in Tipperary want Tipperary to win – none more so than the players.

“We’d obviously be more disappointed even than the supporters but you can accept that they have ambitions for the team as much as we do. So it’s hard for everyone when you lose.”

Seamus Callanan

Seamus Callanan

In the aftermath of the defeat to Cork, some malicious and false rumours were spread on social media about the social lives of some of the players.

Callanan admits lies that were doing the rounds were “terrible”, but insists the Tipperary panel remains as close-knit as ever.

“Look, sure there’s the world of nonsense going around, but I presume it goes around a lot of other panels too,” he says. “What can we do?

“We have no control over what people want to say about us – absolutely unfounded rumours, and we have no control over that.

“We just have to control the controllables going forward and concentrate on performance. Look, it’s terrible that these rumours go around but we are kind of powerless towards it.

“We are concentrating now on moving forward from it. We’ve a strong panel, a very close-knit panel, and we’re moving forward. Obviously it’s disappointing the way people have spread these unfounded rumours.

“But we have to move on from that, concentrate on our jobs and move forward.”

Tipperary were also beaten by Cork in the Munster SHC Quarter-Final in 2010 and bounced back from that set-back to win the All-Ireland.

Callanan says they can’t simply hope that will happen again, they have to make it happen.

“You have to play these games in the now,” he says. “You can’t just refer to 2010 and think it’s going to be the same way because every day is different and we were a different panel in 2010 and every other team is different as well.

“It’s completely different. The only comparison you can make is you lost the first round and went into the qualifiers.

“We have to wait for the draw next week, see who we get. We’re training hard at the moment for whoever we do get so it will be nice to have a focus next Monday.”