Tipperary football manager, Liam Kearns.
By John Harrington
Tipperary football manager Liam Kearns is keeping his fingers crossed that his team’s luck might be finally turning.
Injuries to key players has been a steady theme for the past two seasons that sunk to a new nadir earlier this year when Kearns estimates he was down 12 players for their Allianz Football League clash with Armagh.
Just in time for the 2019 Championship, though, it looks like Tipperary might finally have a full deck of cards to deal from.
Kearns has had a full complement of players training for the past couple of weeks ahead of Sunday’s Munster SFC quarter-final clash with Limerick, but many of them are far from fully fit after returning from long-term injuries.
Ideally, a good, hard match against Limerick would bring them on nicely for a Munster Semi-Final against Cork, but the conundrum facing Kearns is that if you throw too many in at the deep end together the whole team could capsize on Sunday.
“You can throw them in but hoping they get up to speed won't work in a Championship match either,” said Kearns. “Especially when you have so many of them.
“That's the problem, if you throw seven of them in there and you don't know if they're going to be up to it or not, you're going to be found out.
“It's definitely going to be mix and match as to how long some of them will able to play, and some of them will be able to play longer than others.
“That's something we'll have to take into account, that's just the hand we've been dealt.
“For the likes of Bill Maher and Robbie Kiely, it’s too soon for them. They'll be involved alright, but it is too soon. I could do with another month before a Championship match, that would be nice.
“That's not the way it works though, I'm afraid. When you get on the back foot, and we're on the back foot since the start of the year, it's very hard to get onto the front foot and we're desperately trying to get onto the front foot.
“These next two games will tell us now whether we can salvage the year or not.”
Tipperary defender, Bill Maher, has recovered from a long-term achilles injury but is unlikely to start Sunday's Munster SFC Quarter-Final against Limerick.
Tipperary’s relegation from Division Two of the Allianz Football League this year means there’s not much of a buzz around the team going into this Munster Championship.
But the 2016 All-Ireland semi-finalists still have a lot of quality in their ranks and might surprise a few people yet if they can get their best team on the pitch consistently.
They’re certainly capable of reaching a Munster Final by beating both Limerick and Cork, and because of the personalities they have in the panel a potential Munster Final against Kerry would be a motivating rather than unnerving challenge.
“I don't know if that's from the hurling side of things or what, but they definitely have a lot of self-belief,” admits Kearns.
“Just as an example, we went to that All-Ireland semi-final against Mayo and that game was going really well and then Robbie Kiely got black-carded and they hit us for a goal and seven points in the ten minutes before half-time.
“I know everybody thought it was going to be a cake-walk in the second-half then. I think we went from being three up to five down at half-time.
“And, yet, my guys were able to go out and we beat them for most of the second-half and got it back to within two points of them. It was only eight minutes from the end that they got a scruffy goal to finish the game.
“If my guys didn't believe in themselves they were certainly entitled to lie down and die there in the second half and accept their fate and that this wasn't going to be their year and leave it at that.
“But they didn't, and that's the sort of self-belief that they have. To be honest, the bigger the team, the better they respond.
“And the more they're written off, that's the position they love being in. Whereas if they were playing their equals or supposed equals they might find it harder to raise themselves to beat teams they should be beating.
“But they'll always perform against bigger teams. The Kerrys, the Mayos. We lived with Mayo again the last time we played them in the qualifiers.
“There's good character in the Tipperary boys. So if we got to a Munster Final we wouldn't be going there to make up the numbers. But the evidence also says that Kerry would be too good for us.
“I'm not going to sit here and say we'd be beat Kerry because you'd be laughed out of the house. But it wouldn't be in their make-up to go in and just make up the numbers. They have a lot of belief in themselves.”
Tipperary manager Liam Kearns and his players leave the field at half-time during the 2016GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Semi-Final game between Mayo and Tipperary at Croke Park in Dublin.
This is Kearns’ fourth season as Tipperary manager but he isn’t regarding the 2019 season as a do or die one for this talented generation of Premier County footballers.
“No, I think they're going to be around for a number of years yet,” said Kearns. “The age profile...there are a couple of key players who are older like Brian Fox and Philip Austin. Robbie Kiely would be 27/28, but the rest of them would have a good five years in them.
“I honestly believe they can compete if they want to compete for the next five years. But they need to go and make the breakthrough. Kerry are only going to get better.
“As good as they are now, they're young, so they'll only improve.
"Cork will come again, they're too big not to. Once they sort themselves out, give themselves a couple of years and they will come again.
“So if Tipperary are going to do something major, they need to do it soon. But, lets be honest, are they ever going to get to an All-Ireland semi-final again? I don't know. That was a massive achievement.
“I don't see this as a final hurrah for them anyway, but, again, that's up to the players. This is my fourth year and they've given good commitment to it in that time.
“Are they ready to give it another three or four? Do they believe that there is a Munster title there for them? We'll see.”
