By John Harrington

Tipperary’s progression to the All-Ireland SFC Semi-Final this year was so unexpected, it’s hard to know what to expect from them now that they are there.

The reflex judgement is that Mayo’s far greater experience of playing in matches of this magnitude has to count for a lot against a team like Tipp dealing with the demands of the occasion for the very first time.

But Tipp have shown precious little regard for the reputations of others so far in this Championship, so maybe previous pedigree doesn’t count for all that much.

There seems to be an absence of self-doubt in their psychological make-up, and team manager Liam Kearns is adamant his players will bring the game to Mayo the same as they have against every other team so far in their Championship campaign.

“We are confident we are going to perform, we are confident that we are an improving team,” says Kearns. “We are stepping up hugely now to the top level and we are going to find out if we are good enough.

“To say we are confident, that's not a word I would use. Our mantra all year has been to go out and produce our best performance and we have done that in every game, bar the Kerry game.

“And if we produce our best performance in two weeks' time, I will be happy with that, regardless of what the result brings. And I am confident that we will produce that, whether it is good enough, whether we are improving fast enough. Like, it has been a very steeping learning curve.

“We started in Division three, we started with nobody giving us a chance against Cork and now we are in an All-Ireland semi-final, trying to beat the three best teams in the country so it has been a steep learning curve and to say we are confident is not the way that I would put it.

“I am confident that we will perform, and confident that we are improving but it will come out in the wash now in two week’s time, we will know whether we have enough to survive with Mayo. It is a big ask, it is a big ask but we are there are and we are going to find out.”

And All-Ireland semi-final is a step-up again, but the lack of fear with which Tipperary played against Galway in the All-Ireland Quarter-Final backs up Kearn’s confidence in his team’s ability to perform in pressurised environments.

“The stage was never going to matter,” says Kearns. “The boys play good football and if they’re able to run up scores on a regular basis like they did, I was confident they would perform.

“I didn’t expect to beat Galway like we did but they are running up big scores in all their matches, they’re capable of doing that. We’re conceding maybe too much but the most pleasing aspect of the Galway match was that we conceded 1-10, which was cut in half, we were averaging 2-18.

“I told them before the game that if we concede that much again, we won’t be coming out of it. That was most pleasing but we got 30 per cent of chances.

“We created a huge amount against Galway, we missed 70 per cent of them, that’s an area we’ve got to work on. 3-13 is fair enough, but that’s an area we have to work on. We won’t get that many chances against Mayo and we’ll probably have to convert more.

“It will be a rarefied atmosphere and this is the highest level we’ll have been at. Mayo will bring a lot of intensity and put us under a lot of pressure. How we handle that will have a big bearing on how we go.”

Tipperary’s fearless attitude is complemented by expansive brand of attacking football they play. Their half-backs bomb forward at every available opportunity, and they also have the ability to kick long to target-men Michael Quinlivan and Conor Sweeney with great effect.

Some have damned them with faint praise by admiring their ‘give it a lash’ attitude, but there’s as much structure to their play as there is adventure.

“I'll let other people judge that, it is not for me to judge that,” said Kearns. “We are all working very hard at it, we are getting good performances.

“Giving it a lash wouldn't be fair I would say but I'll leave it for other people to judge it. It isn't for me to say, if people think we just come together and then go out and play the game as we find it, then fair enough.

“We are getting a lot of praise for the type of football we are playing. We are playing to our strengths as we would see it.”

There was certainly no naivety about the way they pulled Galway apart in the All-Ireland Quarter-Final. It was clear they had a lot of homework done on the Connacht side, particularly their kick-out strategy.

So much so, that Galway footballer Gary Sice remarked afterwards that Tipperary knew more about them than they should have. Kearns denies though he had any inside information of the Tribesmen.

“I was at the Connacht final they beat Roscommon in. I studied all their games, every manager studies every game the opposition have and we made assumptions that were pretty right based on what we saw of them.

“We made match-ups based on that and what is what every manager and management team does, then you either get it right or get it wrong. Sometimes you get it very wrong, sometimes you get it right, sometimes it is half right. On that day we got it pretty right.

“We didn't have insider knowledge, I can put that to rest. We do a lot of work on the opposition. We got it pretty right on the day.

“We are not naive in fairness. We play to a pattern and a system and have done a lot of working on the training ground in relation to that. It is up to people to make their own assumptions in relation to it.

“Gary (Sice) thought we had too much information, but basically we got lucky.”

Kearns himself has been a big part of the Tipperary success story so far this year. Not only has he been tactically astute, his man-management style has helped foster a vibrant team-spirit.

In the wake of Tipperary’s win over Galway he gave his players the licence to celebrate it with a night on the town, and it’s a testament to how serious inter-county GAA has gone that this approach caused such a stir.

“I find that funny and it's strange,” says Kearns. “I want them to celebrate after a game and I want them to, and I feel there is a psychological advantage of doing it is way more, you can't quantify it actually.

“Every team does it. Every team after a championship match would have a few drinks and I think one of the Tyrone players, I think Tiernan McCann, said they do. I heard Paul Galvin talking about it. Paul had an interesting version of it, Black Magic he called it.

“I would say every team does it and I want my team to do it because I think it has gone too serious, there is too much, they are being told what to eat, they are being told what to drink, they are being told what time they can go out at night.

“I think they are being treated as semi-professionals. The media now is huge and I just don't want the fun going out of it. I want them to enjoy it and that's our philosophy and that's where is comes from.”

Kearns admits that if you had told him or his players six months ago that they’d be in an All-Ireland semi-final, they’d have told you to “lie down in a dark room or something.”

Here they are though, and by now they believe anything is possible.