Tipperary 2-24 Clare 2-17

The eternal tensions between those who want and those who need often resolve themselves thusly. A Clare team with a summer of honouring last year's efforts ahead of them appeared in Limerick without ever really turning up.

A Tipperary team who needed the shock paddles applied a month ago found that they’re buzzing still. Somewhere in there, the difference made flesh was a seven-point gap.

If Tipp didn’t necessarily need to make a league final, they would certainly find more use for one than Clare.

Whereas Davy Fitz is probably only a position or two at the very most away from naming his championship 15, Eamon O’Shea’s is still a half-finished sketch. A league final against Kilkenny will tell him more about the sort of picture he’ll bring into June with him. As revivals go, Tipp’s is still a delicate one.

But this was better, undeniably. They overcame the concession of an alarmingly sloppy early goal to as good as snuff out Clare's inside forwards for the rest of the game. In swallowing his more adventurous instincts, Pádraic Maher may have played himself into the number three jersey for the summer.

Most secure
Whether or not he's entirely happy about it is another matter. No question about it though – this was the most secure Tipp have looked all year.

Brendan Maher swept studiously in front of his full-back line, James Barry hurled a world of ball at wing-back.

They couldn’t bear another day of continually picking the ball out of the net and played accordingly.

By contrast, Clare were flat for long spells. Colm Galvin stood tall in midfield but beyond him there weren’t many who left their mark on the day.

After Cathal McInerney’s fourth-minute goal, no Clare forward scored more than two points from play for the rest of the afternoon.

Podge Collins was an intermittent threat, Tony Kelly scarcely a factor.

In truth, Fitzgerald was sanguine enough about it all afterwards. Throughout the spring he’s been telling people that his team would eventually pay the price for a fractured pre-season and the fall-out from a September that changed all their lives. This was it.

“Before the league started I said it had been a massive, massive six or seven months. I knew it was going to take its toll, people thought I was playing mind games earlier on in the year. That wasn’t true. That same bite and drive – you have to go at it 100 per cent if you are going to win games like that. Tipperary had the bite and drive today, you could see that.”

Maybe so, but for a few early minutes it looked as though the worst excesses of their early league form might be revisited. They were leading by 0-3 to 0-1 by the time a scuffle for ball around their own 45 found Cathal McInerney in exactly the sort of space Tipp must have planned never to leave in their full-back line. And though his initial shot was saved, the Clare corner-forward managed to bundle it in from ensuing melee.

To Tipp’s credit, though, they treated it for the aberration it was and for the rest of the game Clare didn’t once get in behind them.

Eamon O’Shea would occasionally wave a defender back if he thought they were straying too far upfield but by and large they kept it tight.

At the other end, Seamus Callanan’s terrific league form continued.

He had eight points on the board by the break and would surely have had a goal if referee Colm Lyons hadn’t called Tipp back for a free in the 33rd minute when he was clean through.

Two points in particular stood out from Callanan. One from play, over his shoulder from out on the right sideline, was majestic.

Another, from a long-distance free, had to be struck off balance when he made a mess of the lift. Same result all the same. Thanks in the main to him and Bonner Maher, scorer of a fine 18th minute goal, Tipp forged on into a 1-14 to 1-7 half-time lead.

Carbon copy
If this was ever to turn into a game, it needed Clare to rattle themselves early in the second half. And though the impressive Galvin did just that when he pulled on a loose ball on 39 minutes for Clare's second goal, Tipp had it cancelled out within a minute.

Bonner Maher nailed his second with a carbon copy run through the middle of the defence and from there to the end, Tipp were never seriously in trouble.

Clare goalkeeper Donal Tuohy had to make two fine saves to prevent more goals and Callanan tapped a penalty over the bar nine minutes from time. Shane Bourke came off the bench to throw a couple of points into the mix and Niall O'Meara burnished his growing reputation with a couple more. Tipp scored five of the last six, still running hard when Clare had long given up the ghost.
TIPPERARY: D Gleeson; C Barrett, P Maher, M Cahill; J Barry (0-1), N Maher, C O'Mahony; K Bergin, J Woodlock (0-1); D Maher (0-1), P Maher (2-0), J O'Dwyer (0-2, 0-1 free); N McGrath (0-1), S Callanan (0-12, 0-6 frees, 0-2 65, 0-1 pen), N O'Meara (0-3). Subs: G Ryan (0-1) for D Maher (46 mins), S McGrath for N McGrath ( 51 mins), S Bourke (0-2) for O'Dwyer (63), M Breen for Woodlock ( 68 mins).
CLARE: D Tuohy; D McInerney (0-1), C Dillon, J Browne; B Bugler, Conor Ryan, P O'Connor; P Donnellan (0-1), C Galvin (1-2); J Conlon (0-1), T Kelly (0-2), Colin Ryan (0-5, 0-4 frees); P Collins (0-2), C McGrath (0-2), C McInerney (1-1). Subs: A Cunningham for McGrath (temp), 5-7 mins; P Duggan for C McInerney (half-time) S Collins for Galvin (62 mins), A Cunningham for Conlon ( 64 mins).
Referee: C Lyons (Cork)