Alllianz Hurling League Division 1 Semi-Final

TIPPERARY 5-18 WEXFORD 1-19

By John Harrington at Nowlan Park

With 57 minutes on the clock, this looked like anyone’s game.

An inspirational Lee Chin point on the run had reduced Tipperary’s lead to just two points, and chants of ‘Wexford, Wexford, Wexford’, rang around Nowlan Park.

Tipperary weren’t long silencing them.

In a devastating nine minutes of hurling they scored 3-4 from play with just a point in reply from Wexford as they settled the contest in the most emphatic way possible.

Wexford had huffed and puffed to make a real contest of the game, but when it came to the crunch Tipperary’s quality was just on another level.

The McGrath brothers, Noel and John, were especially irresistible, scoring 2-2 each and finishing their goal-chances with the sort of calm and ruthlessness very few forwards possess.

Tipperary had made it quite clear from very early on in the game that came to Nowlan Park in a fired up and focused frame of mind.

Steven O’Brien rocked Wexford defender Damien Reck with a ferocious and perfectly timed shoulder that turned over the ball and led directly to the opening scoring of the match from Seamus Callanan.

Wexford seemed surprised by Tipperary’s intensity in the opening minutes and struggled to get to the pitch of the contest.

By the time they did get any sort of foot-hold in the game, they were already 1-2 to no-score down, with the Tipperary goal coming from John McGrath after six minutes.

It was a score that left Wexford in no doubts that any error at this level of the game against a team like Tipperary tend to be punished ruthlessly.

James Breen beat McGrath in a foot-race to the ball, but stumbled over his attempted pick-up and allowed McGrath to win possession instead.

The Loughmore-Castleiney man had only one thing on his mind, and after making a bee-line towards the Wexford goal smashed the ball to the roof of the net past a helpless Mark Fanning.

Jack O’Connor finally got Wexford off the mark with a fine point on the run, and then Conor McDonald left three between the teams with a converted free.

But just when it looked like Wexford were finding their feet, they were floored by another Tipperary goal.

Once again it looked like the Wexford defence had a situation under control when James Breen won the ball, but as he attempted to drive forward with the ball he was met by meaty challenges from Noel McGrath, John McGrath, and Niall O’Meara.

Between the three of them they stopped him in his tracks, John McGrath knocked it out of Breen’s hand, and when O’Meara snaffled it in the air he immediately popped the pass to Noel McGrath who had taken a chance by drifting away from the collision zone and into space.

His gamble paid off, because when O’Meara got the ball to him he was in splendid isolation with only Fanning to beat which he did clinically with a low drive to the net.

Wexford manager Davy Fitzgerald responded by staging a one-man pitch invasion as he tried to rouse his troops, and it certainly energised the 19,085 spectators in Nowlan Park.

The Wexford players too grew more animated as the first-half progressed, as they shook off the disappointment of those two goals and took the game to Tipperary.

Their sweeper Shaun Murphy was starting to get on more ball, and the switch of Lee Chin from wing-forward to midfield gave them a lot more dynamism in the middle third.

The Tipperary defence were starting to concede frees as Wexford ran hard at them, and after Lee Chin had missed a few earlier in the game, Conor McDonald was proving more accurate from those placed balls.

Tipperary briefly checked Wexford’s growing momentum with a couple of classy points.

First Seamus Callanan slung one over from the right side-line, and then he set up Jason Forde for another with an audacious piece of skill as he controlled a long delivery with a lovely touch, and then flicked the sliotar into the path of Forde who was running towards him from the other direction.

A couple of more frees from McDonald kept Wexford in touch before the half ended on a high with two inspirational long-range points in a row, one from Tipperary’s Paudie Maher and the other from Wexford’s Diarmuid O’Keeffe.

So when the half-time whistle blew, Tipperary were 2-6 to 0-8 to the good.

Considering they’d shipped two early goals, Wexford were entitled to feel good enough about themselves with the benefit of a stiff breeze to come in the second-half.

Tipperary manager Michael Ryan didn’t spend the half-time break resting on his laurels, though.

He whipped off Niall O’Meara and replaced him with Michael Breen who immediately had a big impact on the game.

In the first ten minutes of the second-half he almost single-handedly repressed a Wexford uprising.

Conor McDonald, Paul Morris, and David Redmond all fired over points as the Slaney-siders made the most of the wind at their backs, but in the same period Breen scored three from play to preserve Tipp’s buffer on the score-board.

Positioned at centre-forward, he gave the previously dominant Matthew O’Hanlon some serious problems.

The League campaign up until this game had been a forgettable one for Breen who had looked out of sorts and short of confidence in previous matches, but he was back to his best here.

But even despite Breen’s best efforts, it looked like Tipperary were struggling to contain Wexford’s growing momentum when Chin struck that 57th minute point to leave the scores reading 2-12 to 0-16.

What makes this Tipperary team something special though is their sheer firepower and ability to score a goal out of nothing at any moment.

It came to the fore once again when Dan McCormack collected a driven Ronan Maher clearance and immediately found John McGrath who bore down on goal and finished clinically for the second time in the match.

Points from Noel McGrath and another from John swiftly followed before Tipperary substitute John O’Dwyer set up Noel for his second goal of the match with an absolutely sublime cross-field pass.

Tipperary were playing champagne hurling now and more points followed from John McGrath and O’Dwyer before a Conor McDonald free from Wexford briefly stemmed the Premier County’s flow.

Not for long. Midfielder Brendan Maher capped a very industrious display with an enterprising run forward that was picked out by a Daire Quinn pass and the Borris-Ileigh man fired home his team's fifth goal from a tight angle.

Credit to Wexford, they kept fighting to the finish even though the game was over as a contest, and were rewarded for their endeavour with an injury-time goal from Liam Ryan.

Regardless of this result, this League campaign was still a hugely positive one for Davy Fitzgerald and his team and sets them up well for a serious tilt at the Leinster Championship.

As for Tipperary, they’ve proven that last year’s All-Ireland success has done nothing to dull their appetite for further success.

Scorers for Tipperary: Noel McGrath 2-2, John McGrath 2-2, Brendan Maher 1-2, Michael Breen 0-4, Seamus Callanan 0-3 (1 ’65), Jason Forde 0-2, Padraic Maher 0-1, John O’Dwyer 0-1, Daire Quinn 0-1

**Scorers for Wexford: **Conor McDonald 0-7 (6f), Lee Chin 0-4 (1 ’65), Liam Ryan 1-0, David Redmond 0-3, Diarmuid O’Keeffe 0-1, Jack O’Connor 0-1, Paul Morris 0-1, David Dunne 0-1, Kevin Foley 0-1.

TIPPERARY: Darren Gleeson; Cathal Barrett, James Barry, Michael Cahill; Seamus Kennedy, Ronan Maher, Padraic Maher; Brendan Maher, Jason Forde; Dan McCormack, Niall O’Meara, Steven O’Brien; Noel McGrath, John McGrath, Seamus Callanan. **Subs: **M Breen for N O’Meara (ht), John O’Dwyer for Steven O’Brien (48),  Daire Quinn for Jason Forde (65), Barry Heffernan for Seamus Kennedy (67), Tomas Hamill for James Barry (67).

WEXFORD: Mark Fanning; Willie Devereux, Liam Ryan, James Breen; Damien Reck, Matthew O'Hanlon, Diarmuid O'Keeffe; Aidan Nolan, Shaun Murphy; Conor McDonald, David Redmond, Jack O'Connor; Paul Morris, Lee Chin, David Dunne. Subs: Jack Guiney for Damien Reck (48) Kevin Foley for Paul Morris (54), Harry Kehoe for David Redmond (54), Simon Donohoe for Aidan Nolan.

Ref: D Kirwan (Cork)

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