Preview: All-Ireland SHC Final
Cork and Tipperary clash in the 2025 All-Ireland SHC Final on Sunday. Photo by Sam Barnes/Sportsfile
Sunday July 20
All-Ireland SHC Final
Cork v Tipperary, Croke Park, 3.30pm, RTE/BBC
Precisely a fortnight after the Cork county board announced Pat Ryan as their new senior hurling manager in early July 2022, Liam Cahill got the nod in neighbouring Tipperary.
Both were handed three-year terms and, sure enough, three years on, both have taken their teams to the very last stage of the 2025 Championship.
Friday was the three-year anniversary of Cahill's appointment in Tipp and he was handed a broadly similar remit to that which Ryan received; to max out the potential of a group of young stars who were just coming of age.
Between the two counties, Cork and Tipp shared six All-Ireland U-20 titles evenly between them from 2018 to 2025, three each. They met in the 2018 and 2019 finals, both won by Tipp.
Cahill was in charge for those wins, Ryan for the 2020 and 2021 All-Ireland successes with Cork, so their progression to the senior hotseats made sense and has paid off.
Tipp were senior champions as recently as 2019 though won just two of their next 10 Championship games, across three seasons, before Cahill, who managed Waterford to the 2020 All-Ireland final, came in while Ryan inherited a high performing Cork side that contested the 2021 MacCarthy Cup final.
Cork returned for the 2024 final, losing to Clare after extra-time, and it is no great surprise to see them back contesting another final. As Allianz League champions for the first time since 1998, Munster winners for the first time since 2018 and having already beaten Tipp heavily in both the league final and in Munster, they are favourites to take a first title since 2005.
The sense around Cork is that this is their time to finally end those two decades of hurt and Ryan has named an unchanged side from the one that dismantled Dublin with such ruthless precision at the semi-final stage, winning by 7-26 to 2-21.
The smoothness of their hurling that day, the angles of attack, the slick stick work, intensity, appetite and sheer majesty of their performance was a joy to behold.
Tipp took care of Kilkenny the following day to ensure a first ever Tipp-Cork All-Ireland decider. They too used goals as their battering ram to a landmark win, beating the Leinster champions by 4-21 to 0-30, though it was a game that went right to the wire.
Of all Tipp's goals, Oisin O'Donoghue's was the decisive one, breaking Kilkenny hearts all over again in what was the Premier County's first Championship game at Croke Park since beating the same team in the 2019 final.
Brian Hayes of Cork in action against Michael Breen of Tipperary. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
Cahill's unchanged Tipperary lineout contains four starters from that 2019 final success; captain Ronan Maher, converted defender Michael Breen and attacking duo Jason Forde and John McGrath.
The real intrigue around personnel selection, in both camps, is on the bench. Tipp have replaced Sean Kenneally with Paddy McCormack in their substitutes list while the ultra experienced Seamus Harnedy and Cormac O'Brien have overcome hamstring and quad injuries to start on Cork's bench.
It will be Patrick Horgan's fifth All-Ireland senior final with Cork. Could the powerful and highly mobile Breen be given the task of tracking the Glen Rovers great? Breen could be assigned to Brian Hayes either, a player in Hurler of the Year form. Or Eoghan Connolly could be the kryptonite to Hayes' Superman.
But what do Tipp do then about Alan Connolly, a man who has consistently punished them with goals? Could that be one for Robert Doyle to handle?
Tipp, in turn, have enjoyed watching Jake Morris make hay at Cork's expense over the years. Jason Forde is showing career high form next to Morris in Tipp's attack and Darragh McCarthy, well, the young phenom can be anything he wants to be. He has exploded onto the senior hurling scene this year and the All-Ireland final stage is a blank canvas for him to apply his brush strokes of genius.
Will McCarthy or Forde take the frees? That's another conundrum for Cahill.
What seems a certainty is that this is going to be a rip-roaring All-Ireland final played between two teams committed to all-out attack. Goals, plenty of them, are likely. Neither has ever won a MacCarthy Cup decider when facing another Munster team in it either. So new ground will be broken on all sorts of fronts.
CORK: Patrick Collins; Niall O'Leary, Eoin Downey, Sean O'Donoghue; Ciaran Joyce, Robert Downey, Mark Coleman; Tim O'Mahony, Darragh Fitzgibbon; Diarmuid Healy, Shane Barrett, Declan Dalton; Patrick Horgan, Alan Connolly, Brian Hayes.
Subs: Brion Saunderson, Damien Cahalane, Ger Millerick, Cormac O'Brien, Tommy O'Connell, Luke Meade, Brian Roche, Seamus Harnedy, Robbie O'Flynn, Conor Lehane, Shane Kingston.
TIPPERARY: Rhys Shelly; Robert Doyle, Eoghan Connolly, Michael Breen; Craig Morgan, Ronan Maher, Bryan O'Mara; Willie Connors, Conor Stakelum; Jake Morris, Andrew Ormond, Sam O'Farrell; Darragh McCarthy, John McGrath, Jason Forde.
Subs: Barry Hogan, Joe Caesar, Seamus Kennedy, Paddy McCormack, Brian McGrath, Noel McGrath, Peter McGarry, Oisin O'Donoghue, Johnny Ryan, Darragh Stakelum, Alan Tynan.
