COMING INTO THE final 20 minutes of the 2019 All-Ireland semi-final, Tipperary were trailing Wexford by five points and staring elimination in the face.
On top of that, John McGrath had just been dismissed with a second yellow card, leaving the team with an even slimmer chance of a revival. Then Tipp manager Liam Sheedy turned to his bench to shuffle the deck and throw in some reinforcements.
Among them were underage All-Ireland-winning duo Jake Morris and Mark Kehoe. Along with fellow substitutes Willie Connors and Ger Browne, the pair drilled over a point apiece to help complete an awesome comeback and send Tipperary into the All-Ireland final.
Morris and Kehoe were introduced again off the bench in the decider against Kilkenny. And again, they combined for two points from play in a comprehensive win for Tipperary. Slim margins between being conquerors and being conquered.
That was their debut season with the county’s senior hurlers, and now that they’re into their fourth campaign, Morris and Kehoe are completing the transition from starlets to leaders.
In the Munster round-robin series, they racked up a colossal 3-20 between them, looking particularly devastating against the reigning All-Ireland champions Limerick. That tally was accomplished despite Morris missing out on the final game against Waterford through injury.
Consider the breakdown of that scoring figure:
In their provincial opener against Clare, Morris scooped 2-4 while Kehoe picked up one point. Their next outing was a thriller with Cork where Kehoe scored 1-4 and Morris came away with three points. Last weekend, the pair played instrumental roles in an emphatic win over Offaly as Kehoe went scavenging for 3-3 and Morris hooked over seven points. In short, the boxes just keep ticking when these players on the pitch.
It’s no coincidence that they’re hitting those markers under Liam Cahill who helped them deliver an All-Ireland minor crown in 2016, and the same again at U21 level in 2018.
Other members of those successful underage backroom teams are serving under Cahill again this time, including Mikey Bevans. Familiar folks still aiming for the same glorious outcome.
“They’re becoming established now and hugely important players on the team,” says Seán Nugent, who was involved with the Tipp minor squad when they defeated Limerick in both the 2016 Munster final and All-Ireland final. “They’re stars of the present and stars of the future.
“I’ve worked with Liam Cahill and Mikey Bevans over the years and they’re absolutely exceptional people over a team. They will get the best out of players. That has been proven during minor and U20 campaigns. Those younger players are really enjoying what they’re doing at the moment and they would buy into the style and approach that Liam and Mikey would have because they’re familiar with their training methods for quite a few years.
“They’ve had their success together before and they would have huge confidence. They know how to respond to those men.”
In recent seasons, Tipperary have been struck with serious injuries to some of their more seasoned campaigners. Patrick ‘Bonner’ Maher missed the 2019 season with an ACL tear, and picked up another season-ending injury in 2021. This time, it was his Achilles tendon that was causing the trouble.
Séamus Callanan broke a bone in his hand in the early stages of the 2022 season, and his comeback suffered complications when an infection set in shortly after. And as Tipperary bowed out of the championship after a winless run in Munster, the Drom-Inch star forward was unable to recover in time to help force a change in their fortunes.
The Covid-enforced interruptions of 2020 and 2021 didn’t help either, as training schedules and competition structures were put through the washing machine. There’s also the high-profile retirements to list out as well, including John ‘Bubbles’ O’Dwyer, Brendan Maher and Pádraic Maher.
Rising stars like Morris and Kehoe were developing at a time of great flux in the Tipp squad, and would surely have benefited from a bit more exposure to the aforementioned talents. Multi-All-Ireland winners have so much knowledge to impart to the new members of the flock. However, they weren’t totally adrift while learning the ropes.
“I accept that those guys were gone but they also had guys like Noel McGrath who’s an exceptional player,” says Nugent, who is also a member of Kehoe’s club in Kilsheelan-Kilcash. “They would have had Jason Forde as well and he would be a few years older than them.
“So those other senior players were gone from the panel for a period, but they still had others who were very helpful in progressing their careers.
“One thing I noticed about both of those players is that they’re big game players. Any time Mark has played in Croke Park, he has performed maybe better than some of the other days out. They’re two very talented players. They have a great burst of speed as well which is very helpful when you get ahead of an opponent.
“They’re hard to catch and you can see that with Mark too in recent games. Against Cork in the Munster championship, he got ahead of his man and he didn’t catch him.”
There was a striking moment in that Munster round-robin epic between Tipperary and Limerick that seemed to signify a changing of the guard in the Premier County. While Morris and Kehoe were picking pockets to score eight points between them, the Tipperary bench was rolling. Séamus Callanan, who is more commonly seen in a starting position, came in to tap over a crucial point in a heavy downpour.
Of course, Callanan is still an important cog in the Tipp machine. He suffered medial knee ligament damage earlier this year to add to his injury woes, but he has rallied once again. He has started in championship games since the Limerick match, and has been named to start at full-forward against Galway. Morris and Kehoe will be keeping him company in the corners.
That said though, the moment of Callanan’s late point against Limerick symbolised the baton passing on to Morris, Kehoe and their generation. After a time of change and transition, the pair are working hard to stop the plates from shifting around the team.
After easily accounting for Offaly last weekend, Tipperary will now face Galway later this evening for a place in the All-Ireland semi-finals. Neither Morris nor Kehoe were around for the All-Ireland semi-final epic between these sides in 2015, or the other thunderous final-four tie in 2017. They got a taste of it when the sides met in the 2020 All-Ireland quarter-final when Morris started at centre-forward, and Kehoe came in as a late substitute.
But tonight, they will be standing in the coalface for the latest chapter of a great hurling rivalry.
“When you’ve faced up to Limerick,” says Nugent, “and got on pretty well with them, you must have confidence that you can face any other team that’s left in the championship. That game against Limerick was a huge eye-opener that Tipperary can perform and where there might have been doubts about them after last year’s campaign, I think they proved that we can be up there with the best on our day.”
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