EAMON O’SHEA has admitted that last Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final defeat against Galway was a “bad ending” to his three-year term as Tipperary senior hurling team manager.
But O’Shea insisted that the current group of players can regroup and win an All-Ireland title under his successor Michael Ryan.
O’Shea told Tipp FM last night: “We have a bright future with this group of players, and I look forward to seeing them ultimately get what they certainly have the ability to achieve – and that’s an All-Ireland.”
O’Shea said that he was pleased with some individual performances against the Tribesmen at Croke Park but expressed disappointment with the collective effort.
He added: “It was a bad ending for us yesterday, the last few minutes and afterwards, everybody was down.
“We’ve put a lot of work in over the last number of years, particularly this year.
“We had a good year up to now in terms of winning but we were very disappointed yesterday.
“I think there’s a good nucleus in there that will certainly go forward over the next number of years, we’ve got a reasonably good age profile.
“On the team there’s a couple of guys maybe on the 30 end but there’s a lot of guys now who have had the experience of winning again, so I’d be very optimistic in terms of the ability and character that’s in the team.
“It comes with the caveat that everything changes from year to year, it’s certainly true that we’ve got to get better in order to win, that’s the evidence.
“It will certainly take a great effort to get back again to the heights we want to be at.”
Seamus Callanan shot the lights out at GAA HQ with an individual haul of 3-9 but it was a disappointing return from Tipp’s other five starting forwards, who registered just four points from play between them.
But O’Shea insisted: “I think there’s nobody more disappointed than the players.
“We tried to work hard to get over the line, we had some success in terms of the Munster championship and certainly had began to win again.
“I think Galway certainly deserved their win, we had some tremendous individual performances but collectively I would have been disappointed.
“The players, myself and the management feel the same way in terms of losing but sometimes you have to accept the situation as well and try to work harder.
“I think that’s what will happen over the next number of years.
“Change is good and I’m sure that what goes around comes around and Tipp will win these matches again and will certainly be in the mix for a long time now.”
O’Shea accepted that a better spread of scores could have helped Tipperary over the line, and hinted that a more direct approach may have been a factor in the Premier County’s failure to find them.
He added: “Yeah, we were playing a little more direct yesterday as well, which certainly paid dividends in the way Seamus was playing (but) certainly we needed to improve our points tally from out and about.
“And I think three or four points would have made a big difference.
“They (Galway) were finding it easier to score points. We had done a good job protecting the full-back line but they did manage to score points a little bit easier than we did and that was the disappointing aspect.”
