Of all the hurling managers in the country, Eamon O’Shea is easily the most enjoyable to talk to after a game. He doesn’t always make what you’d call linear sense but he gets across the flavour of what he’s trying to say and leaves you to take it from there.
After spending the first part of his encounter with us here declaring that neither he nor his players nor anyone involved in Tipperary were happy, he caught himself and went back over it, nearly attempting to parse it himself.
“I’m not trying to downplay the performance or appear any way calm about this,” he said. “I think the performance was really good. I’m just saying they are not happy with their movement and their coming on to the ball.
“In terms of where it came from, these guys are calm. They are calm about what they do. They don’t pay much attention to what is being said or written about them. We tried to get calmness around us, solidity around us, and to be something. That’s all we want to be: to be something.
“What you saw was that solidity. When people are assessing Tipperary, sometimes I see the word ‘flair’ being mentioned. When I assess Tipperary I see the word character’ first. Because you can’t have flair without character.
Character
“This team are really strong in terms of their character. That’s the way it has to be. You can’t get into an All-Ireland final unless the team has bundles of it.”
Was he surprised by how easy the victory turned out to be?
“Eh, well, I don’t like talking about how easy it came. Everybody says that Tipp get easy games – people tend to believe that every opposition that we come up against must give up before we play them.
“I was surprised that Cork weren’t functioning at their A game alright. They missed a few frees, that’s what surprised me. That gave me a little bit of hope that they weren’t firing on all cylinders.
“But we’ve won now by 10, 17, 13, 10 – and people want to see us win a tight game? I’d prefer to win by 10. It kind of relaxes me.”
For his players, this was vindication. It backed up the work they'd done behind closed doors and reaffirmed that they could trust each other when the screw was turned tightest. James Woodlock had a storming game in midfield and spoke afterwards of how the gameplan was to shut the game down and prevent it turning into the shoot-out that everyone predicted.
‘A shoot-out’
“Generally when Cork and Tipp play, that’s what it turns out to be. A shoot-out. We wanted to tidy up the game and play it on our terms. I think maybe every game Tipp have played this year has been on the opposition’s terms.
“With Galway, Offaly and maybe not so much Dublin. But today I think we played it on our terms from the word go. We dictated the pace of the game from the throw-in and we’re happy with that.”
Kilkenny now. Old scores to settle?
“Yeah, but you can’t turn back the clock and say this or that. It’s the future now. We have three weeks to prepare for a game and we have all been here before.
“I presume there’s going to be big hype outside. But for ourselves there’s not going to be anything different in training. It’s just going to be another match for us, we’re not going to be nervous going out.
“None of the boys were nervous today, not one of them. In the dressing-room we were walking around and just looking forward to the game and looking forward to performing. We’ll do the exact same the next day.”
