By John Harrington
Tipperary haven't won a Munster SFC title since 1935. The closest they've come since to adding to their haul of nine provincial titles was in 2002 when they drew with Cork in a highly entertaining Munster Final they could, and perhaps should, have won.
Tom McGlinchey was the Tipperary team manager in 2002 and is a native of Cork himself which perhaps goes some way to explaining why his team looked like they were one step ahead of the hot favourites for much of the match.
GAA.ie took a trip down memory lane with him to recall a contest that many Premier County supporters still regard as a the one that got away.
GAA.ie: Tom, Tipperary were very much the underdogs going into the 2002 Munster Final against Cork. But inside the camp were you feeling confident of causing an upset going into the game?
Tom McGlinchey: We prepared as well as we could and we had quite a good team. We had good forwards in so far as you had Declan Browne, Peter Lambert, Brendan Cummins had thrown his hat in with the footballers that year as well.
We had Fergal O'Callaghan in midfield who was a fantastic midfielder. You had young footballers coming through like Niall Fitzgerald and Kevin Mulryan. We had a nice blend, because you had a few players who would have been involved going back to 1993/94. The likes of Philly Ryan, Liam Cronin, Sean Collum, Sean Maher. So it was a nice blend of youth and experience and we were happy enough going into the game and it suited us as well going in as underdogs. It was an exciting time.
GAA.ie: It was a roasting hot day, wasn't it?
TM: It was an unbelievable day, a roasting day. But we were very fit and we were well prepared going into it.
Tipperary's star forward, Declan Browne, in action against Cork's Graham Canty in the 2002 Munster SFC Final.
GAA.ie: You got off to a strong start, with Declan Browne leading the charge. For people who never saw him play, can you sum up just how talented he was?
TM: There's so many things you could say about Declan. He had everything. He had great vision, he had great balance, could kick with left or right. He was very quick over the first ten yards which people maybe didn't have him the credit for. He was a great influence on all the other players around him because when Declan played well the rest of the team played well. When it comes to football, I don't think there were many better than him.
GAA.ie: Peter Lambert played alongside him in that Tipperary full-forward line and was a very good footballer too. He played his club football down in Cork and presumably would have relished playing Cork in a Munster Final?
TM: Peter was a super footballer. In my time playing in Cork, Peter Lambert was one of the big superstars of the Nemo Rangers football team that won a club All-Ireland. For a Tipperary footballer coming down it wouldn't have been easy to break into a Nemo Rangers team but Peter came down and was one of the mainstays of that Nemo team for many years.
In my time with Tipperary he was a pleasure and a gentleman to deal with. He was a great influence on all the younger players around him. Himself and Declan had a telepathic understanding with one another. Especially in the first half of that Munster Final, he put in two or three passes to Declan and they were just top-notch passes. He put them on a six-pence for him and Declan made the most of the service. The two of those players in a full-forward line were a huge asset for Tipperary.
Brendan Ger O'Sullivan scores his and Cork's second goal in the 2002 Munster SFC Final.
GAA.ie: Tipperary got off to a great start but then conceded two goals in the first half. Brendan Ger O'Sullivan got both of them and the second was an especially soft one when Philly Ryan lost the flight of the ball and it went in over his head. Two bad blows, but it didn't seem to knock Tipp's confidence?
TM: It just showed the resolve they had. Philly was unfortunate. He wasn't just a very good goalkeeper, he was a leading light in that Tipperary team. He was an unbelievable character in the dressing-room and just a very positive presence both on the pitch and off it. That goal, the shot or lob, probably still haunts him. Philly was actually very sick that week going into the game but we gave him every opportunity to play and he passed a fitness test that morning. The goal was unfortunate, but we regrouped at half-time. We were unfortunate to be down by three points at half-time but we made some changes and Cork put Anthony Lynch on Declan which contained him a small bit but also brought some of our other players into the game like Paul Cahill who got a great point, Damien O'Brien came into the game, Brendan Cummins was well in the game all the way through, and then Benny Hickey came on as a sub and got the goal that brought us right back into the game.
The goals we conceded in the first half were hammer-blows, but it was still a very cool, calm dressing-room at half-time and very organised and we stuck to the game-plan in the second-half.
Colin Corkery had the confidence to wear a pair of white monogrammed football boots in the 2002 Munster SFC Final. His self-confidence was justified!
GAA.ie: You scored an unanswered 1-5 in the space of 14 minutes. It was looking good at that stage, but you can't legislate for the genius of a footballer like Colm Corkery who dragged Cork out of a hole single-handedly almost.
TM: Going back to my own club playing career in Cork again and coming up against Colin, he was like Declan Browne in so far as he was deceptively fast over the first ten yards as well as being a consumate footballer. Damien Byrne was marking him that day for us and actually had a super game on him and did his best, but when Colin was on form, he was up there with the very best. I remember Colin playing club matches in Cork kicking frees with his right and left foot. It didn't matter what the distance, he found the range.
He was just a super footballer and we couldn't handle him in the second-half. Cork didn't have much of a threat on that particular day in the second half apart from him and he managed to get them back in front but we were able to equalise at the end.
GAA.ie: It was an unlikely hero who scored that equaliser, corner-back Niall Kelly. He showed a lot of initiative to get up the field and get himself into that position, didn't he?
TM: Yeah, he did. Cork were under the cosh and when they took the lead they retreated back the field and Niall pushed on up the field and showed great level-headedness to get the equaliser. There probably was a small chance for him to play it across the square to Paul Cahill who might have been able to fist the ball to the net. But the percentage play was to go for the point and Niall took it very well, it was the right decision.
If you look back on the build-up to it I think he had made his mind up that he was going to fist it over the bar as soon as the ball came to him. It was actually a great move in the build-up to it. Willie Morrissey was involved in it and gave a lovely pass. I think when Niall got the ball 17 or 18 yards out he already had his mind up what he was going to do. Hats off to him, it was the right decision, even if it is tempting to look back now and wonder what might have happened had he squared it across.
It was a great result for us and there was a nice bit of a buzz around the place afterwards which was nice for the players at that time. It was actually quite a good game of football, there were some great scores and great battles all throughout the game.
Tom McGlinchey was Tipperary senior football team manager in 2002.
GAA.ie: It's obviously the closest that Tipperary have come to ending their long famine for a Munster Football title. Did it feel like a missed opportunity at the time because on the balance of play you were probably the better team on the day?
TM: You have every emotion after a match like that. Looking back on it now all these years later you'd probably say it was a moment missed. On the day itself, if you had said to me at half one that day would I take a draw, I would have bitten off your hand. And then afterwards you're going, 'Jesus, could we have won that?' You have all sorts of emotions. The most immediate emotion afterwards was that you were trying to get the players right and get them ready for the replay. There were lots of emotions but I was just extremely proud of the way they played and the way they went about their task. After the concession of two soft goals a lesser team would have wilted, but the boys stuck to their task until the bitter end and it was a fantastic day to be part of.
GAA.ie: The replay didn't go well. Was it difficult to get back up for the replay after the emotional roller-coaster of the drawn match?
TM: The replay was another unbelievably hot day down in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. We prepared very well. I suppose Cork were really up for it and we had to bring that 'A' game as well and it's hard to get up to that level. Cork definitely uppped their game tenfold the second day and weren't going to get caught twice. It was one of those days too where anything that could have gone wrong for us did go wrong. The ball just seemed to bounce wrong for us or drop short and we had missed opportunities. Then again, Colin Corkery was just on fire that second day too. Maybe it showed my naivety as a manager, not dropping back one or two more players in front of Colin.
There was a bit of controversy because Cork used one more sub than they should have, but we had no interest in making any fuss about that. Six days later we went out to play Mayo in the Qualifiers and were very unlucky that day. We had to play without Sean Collum and Brendan Cummins, two of our main players, but we still pushed them all the way. You look back at it now, and you have to say 2002 was a great campaign for us.
