There seems to be nothing but bad news around the Tipperary camp at the moment and the latest development has the potential to seriously derail their All-Ireland challenge.
First they were hammered in the League final by Galway, then they lost their Munster title when they were beaten by Cork and now news breaks that Cathal Barrett has been dropped from the panel for disciplinary reasons.
Barrett is currently sidelined with a knee injury that he picked up in the Cork game and he is expected to spend six-to-eight weeks recovering, so the timing of this is unusual to say the least.
The fact that he’s injured means that Michael Ryan had a bit of time on his hands to sort this out internally and make sure the story didn’t get out into the public, but Michael has clearly decided that it was worth taking a stand over.
What’s going on now though could be the sort of thing that cripples them for the year
This isn’t necessarily a symptom of a wider problem in the Tipp camp and we can only speculate as to what really went on.
They won the All-Ireland last year with such style and then they motored really well through the League. Despite the defeat to Galway I still had them as raging hot favourites to win the Liam MacCarthy again.
They seemed to handle their win last year really well and Michael appeared to be doing a great job. What’s going on now though could be the sort of thing that cripples them for the year.
The one thing they do have in their favour is that they have a bit of time on their hands because they’re not out in the qualifiers until July, but they have a bit of work to do before they get themselves back on track.
Cathal Barrett was an All Star corner-back last year and Tipp could do with him back, fit and in the team. I’d certainly like to see it and hopefully it’s the case come the business end of the season.
Tipp have long had trouble putting All-Irelands back-to-back, in fact they haven’t done it since the sixties, and what’s going on now isn’t going to make it any easier for management and players to do something that’s already very difficult.
I remember when they beat us in the 2010 final and then they won the All-Ireland Under-21 so convincingly in Thurles less than a week later there was a feeling that they were going to dominate for a few years and that didn’t happen.
I know that defeat reinvigorated us. Success always bred success for us in the Kilkenny camp, but it turns out defeat made us even more determined to succeed.
We’d win an All-Ireland, we’d have a a good few weeks of celebration, we’d go off on the team holiday and then we’d get back training in December or January. Our attitude was that there was no point in training on those horrible nights if you weren’t going to be there at the end of September.
There were always nights during the year that we could go out an enjoy ourselves, when we were off with our clubs or on the Monday after a Championship game, but there was never anything outside of that.
I started with Kilkenny in 2005 and I don’t remember anyone being dropped for disciplinary reasons in that time. Plenty of lads were let go from the panel and it was always down to form or fitness.
We all knew what Brian Cody expected of us and the older players in the panel always set the tone. In 2006 I won my first All-Ireland and we added the Under-21 not long after, but we were never allowed to get carried away.
Watching the hurling at the weekend I was really impressed by Galway and they are deserving favourites for an All-Ireland now.
They aren’t relying on Joe Canning like they used to because they have fine young players like Cathal Mannion, Jason Flynn and Conor Whelan up front to do damage. Joe was pulling the strings from centre-forward, floating all around the pitch and sending ball into those lads.
They’ve sorted out three and six with Daithi Burke and Gearoid McInerney and now they face what should, for them, be a pretty routine Leinster semi-final against Offaly.
Dublin were disappointing and obviously there are problems when so many of their best players are staying away from the panel. If you were Dubs’ supporter it would break your heart to see Danny Sutcliffe playing for New York in the Connacht football championship a few weeks back.
It’s sad to see considering how close they came to beating Cork in the 2013 All-Ireland semi-final and until those problems are sorted out we won’t see anything from Dublin.
Looking ahead to next weekend and I think Clare will beat Limerick. There seems to be a gap between the two of them at the moment and I have a sneaking fancy Clare could win Munster this year.
