Michael Ryan
By John Harrington
Tipperary manager Michael Ryan had no easy answers for the scale of his team's 16-point defeat to Galway in today’s Allianz Hurling League Final.
There was no sense their preparation for the match was anything other than it should be, and he was as surprised by the flat nature of their performance as anyone else.
“No, I can’t explain where it all went wrong,” he said. “That was a complete non-show from us, to be honest. We certainly weren’t prepared for that kind of a game - we weren’t prepared for any kind of a game with that kind of a performance.
“It was the worst performance we’ve had in the length of time I’ve been looking after these boys, very disappointing in a national final, that we’d choose today to come up with one of those.
“We’ll go back and have a think about things but nothing appeared out of order to us since this day last week.
“We were just flat and, to be fair, counter that with Galway, who gave a sterling performance and showed all the right attributes - hunger, power, passion, precision, they had all those things in abundance.
“Credit Galway. They were deserving winners by a country mile, as it was on the scoreboard.”
Tipperary were beaten in all areas of the pitch and the question for Ryan and his management team now is whether they need to perform much surgery on the team ahead of the Munster SHC Quarter-Final against Cork on May 21.
Michael Cahill might be under pressure to hold onto this corner-back jersey after a tough day in the office, there’s still a position vacant for Brendan Maher’s midfield partner, and the composition of the half-forward line will also come under scrutiny after they were cleaned out by the Galway half-backs today.
Michael Ryan
“We looked way below where we’d like to be in several positions on the field,” admitted Ryan.
“Does it leave question marks? We’ll have a good look at this to see where it leaves us in terms of where did it start, where did it stop.
“I’ve been involved in games like this, I’ve played in games like this, and it’s not nice. It’ll hurt nobody more than our players, but it’s done, that’s all we can say about it now.
“I'm nearly more disappointed for the supporters who came here today and who've been supporting us all year long.
"Like, that's not this team. It's the flattest performance we've ever produced and it's very disappointing that that comes on the day of a national final when there was silverware on offer.”
Ryan agreed that the All-Ireland Championship is now wide-open race.
“I’d have said that happened on September 4th last year, to be honest, and I referenced that in what I said post-match,” he said.
“No surprises here other than we had such a poor outing, we expected Galway to be full value as opposition, we know they’re quality opposition - the challenge is going to be ours in terms of having a four week turnaround to the first week of the championship.
“The league is done, it’s been eight games in ten weeks, and it’s been pretty intense. These are amateur players and deserve huge credit for the effort they’ve given.
“It’s time for us to draw breath and to lay our plans for the Munster championship - that’s coming at us fast, against Cork in Thurles."
