Seamus Callanan
By John Harrington
In 2017 the Tipperary hurlers will try to achieve something that has eluded them since 1965 – win back to back All-Ireland Hurling titles.
Until this year’s All-Ireland victory, a common taunt throw at Tipperary teams and supporters was that they had only managed to win one All-Ireland ever decade since their heyday of the ‘60s.
That jibe can no longer be levelled at them, but you can be sure that Kilkenny supporters will continue to enjoy describing Tipp as a ‘one-in-row’ team until that’s taken away from them too.
Winning consecutive All-Irelands is no easy feat though even if Kilkenny have made it look like one in recent years.
Tipperary looked like an especially driven team this year, but will their hunger have been sated by a long awaited All-Ireland Final win over their great rivals?
Tipp full-forward and Opel Hurler of the Month for September, Seamus Callanan, is confident that won’t be the case.
“I don't think so, I don't think it'll be a problem to get that edge because we've seen enough of hurt down through the years and then we've seen the good days like a couple of weeks ago,” said the Drom-Inch clubman.
“When you see both sides of it it's easy enough to motivate yourself to go at it again and to push on again. On a personal level lads are ambitious too. They want to achieve more.”
Seamus Callanan scored 0-13 for Tipperary.
Callanan was one of those players who won All-Ireland senior and U-21 titles in 2010 in the space of a week and was hailed as a generation that would keep Tipp at the top of the hurling pile for the foreseeable future.
Instead the Kilkenny empire struck back, and Callanan and his peers had to wait another six years to win a second one. They suffered a lot of heart-breaking defeats in the interim, and he believes that experience will drive them on now to finally back up success with more of it.
“Definitely, yeah,” says Callanan. “Definitely. And sure any of that experience we can push on to younger players again and tell them they don't want to see the days that we saw, like, you know?
“The pain that we went through as a group, we never want to go back there again and hopefully we won't. But we know that starting as of now the championship draw is on tonight and the league draw was on a few weeks ago so it doesn't be too long coming around and you just have to be a different animal again next year.
“I just think we need to know ourselves that our level of performance this year in winning an All-Ireland final isn't going to be enough next year. It's not going to be what's required to win the All-Ireland final in 2017. You have to take it step by step as well.
“You can't be looking at an All-Ireland final next year. You have to go out and take every game as it comes and build throughout the year and set your small targets first of all.
“Obviously the end goal for every team should be and will be the All-Ireland final but there's an awful lot of work that goes into getting there and an awful lot of sacrifice as well.
“You need a lot of these things on your side and you need to be putting in the time yourself. If you're not you're just going to come up short ultimately and that's it.”
Tipperary forward Seamus Callanan in action during the 2016 All Ireland SHC Final.
Tipperary’s hopes of retaining the Liam MacCarthy Cup next year may have hit a slight bump in the road with news that their highly rated S&C coach, Lukasz Kirszenstein, will instead hook up with the Galway team.
Callanan admits the popular Polish native will be a loss, but believes that the Tipperary players are very much in control of their own destiny.
“Yeah, look, Lukasz is a phenomenal man at his job. You know, he's going to be a loss, but it's like anyone, like lads retiring or anyone going, people just come in and take up the mantle and they go again. Whereas Lukasz has done wonderful work for us in Tipperary, the show will go on again.
“Every player knows what they have to do and the commitment they have to give. There's no manager out there or no strength and conditioning coach out there who can do it for them. Every player has to take it on themselves at the end of the day too. Look, lads just have to push it on again.”
