MUNSTER UNDER-21 FC FINAL REACTION:TIPPERARY MAY have been relegated from Division Two of the NFL after just one season, but this year will go down as a historic one for the county's footballers. Wednesday's under-21 success is arguably the crowning achievement of John Evans's time in the county, eclipsing the Division Three title won 12 months ago.
A narrow win in a low-scoring final in Tralee against home side Kerry, who had been chalked down as All-Ireland contenders after last month’s big win over defending champions Cork, spared Tipp the misery of an unprecedented fourth successive defeat in a provincial final.
Three defeats in a row at this level had only happened to two counties, and it was the county’s 10th final, with no previous success. The result, as well as being as tribute to Evans, who was previously best known for taking his own club Laune Rangers to the 1996 All-Ireland title, caps a great 10 years for the province’s weaker football sides.
Now, Clare are the only county not to have captured the provincial under-21 football championship, which is slightly anomalous as they have been the only one of the four traditionally-hurling counties to have won the senior Munster title in modern times (1992).
In 2003 Waterford won a famous final in Walsh Park when Shane Walsh, now with the senior hurlers, got a touch to a last-minute goal to defeat a Kerry team boasting Declan O’Sullivan, Colm Cooper and Kieran Donaghy.
They were beaten by eventual winners Dublin in the semi-final in Thurles.
Evans will, however, be looking more to the precedent of Limerick, who under Liam Kearns won the Munster title in 2000 and went on to reach the final where they went down to a great Tyrone side captained by the late Cormac McAnallen.
They were also the last county outside of the big two to make an impact at senior level on the provincial championship. In 2003 they were beaten in the final by Kerry in Killarney and a year later against the same opponents, who later that year won the All-Ireland, took the Munster final to a replay and extra-time.
Even last year’s team, which lost by a point to Cork in the senior final, featured three of those under-21s.
The last time Tipperary made an impact in the province was in 1993 and ’94, under the management of Séamus McCarthy, when they reached the final only to lose to Cork on both occasions.
The victory also opens up this year’s All-Ireland championship. The departures of Cork, Kerry, Mayo and Galway in Connacht and Tyrone and Armagh in Ulster mean that every All-Ireland winner at this grade for the past 10 years – with the single exception of Dublin who contest Sunday’s Leinster final against Westmeath – have been knocked out this year before all of the provincial titles have even been won.
Tipperary now await the winners of the Ulster championship, which has reached the semi-final stages with Derry favourites to come out on top.
