By John Harrington

Tipperary hurling manager Michael Ryan says John ‘Bubbles’ O’Dwyer has to fight to win his place back in the team for the All-Ireland Semi-Final against Galway on August 14.

O’Dwyer was red-carded in the Munster Semi-Final victory over Limerick and was subsequently suspended for the Munster Final win over Waterford.

The 2014 All-Star is one of the most gifted forwards in the country, but Ryan insisted yesterday he’s not guaranteed an immediate return to the team.

“He’s treated like everybody else,” said Ryan. “He’s there to compete. For Bubbles he has to get into the 26 – he has been outside. For someone else, they’ve got to fight to keep him out of there.

“The maths are simple: we can only take 26. From that 26, we’ve to pick 15. It’s a really good position to be in; it’s a really healthy position to be in.”

Competition for places in the team is all the more intense because Tipperary have no major injury worries ahead of the clash with Galway.

“We have another week to go so God only knows what we’ll do to them between now and then! No, pretty clean bill of health,” said Ryan. “There is always niggles. The last two guys who played club at the weekend were Brendan Maher and Niall O’Meara and thankfully they came through unscathed which is important. So game on. Competition on.”

Tipperary were beaten at the same stage of the Championship by Galway last year and by their own admission did not handle the five-week break between the Munster Final and All-Ireland Semi-Final as well as they might have had. Ryan is hopeful that won’t be the case this year.

“We’ve managed it quite well,” he said. “The proof of the pudding will be in the eating but so far, so good. We get a bit better at this as we move along and I think we’ve managed it quite well.

“Having a round of club, and we’ve had that for literally all of the championship, even in the three-week turnaround in the Munster final, we had a round of club in there so it’s good.

“Sometimes we feel it puts our boys under a little bit too much pressure…the pinch we had this year was before we played Cork.

“We had three rounds of club senior championship, that’s a lot, and some of our clubs are dual clubs so you could throw in a football match or two in there as well. Not all had that but that was the worst period of the year. Since then, it’s been quite ok.”