IN 2018, the inaugural season of the round-robin era, Tipperary didn’t win a single game. The following year, they were All-Ireland champions.

In 2024, Tipp once again went winless through four games. This year, the bounceback has featured a greater turnover of players, but they stand one game away from the same destination.

Throughout those defeats, Liam Cahill didn’t remain immune to the outside chatter. He heard it all and used it as fuel to prove his doubters wrong.

“It does hurt when your good name is questioned,” Cahill asserts. “It’s only sport, and it’s probably a bit dramatic to reference your name, but your identity and what you stand for.

“When you look in at a team that don’t reflect what you really want to go after and what you prepare for, it does hurt you as a manager.”

Which words hurt after the last campaign?

“The ones that Cahill flogs his teams, his excruciating training sessions. I felt it was disingenuous.

“Liam Cahill doesn’t make it up as he goes along. People commenting on stuff like that, not knowing what exactly is going on behind the scenes, is lazy and ill-informed.

“I felt, maybe not annoyed over it, but a little bit aggrieved that something so loose creates so much traction.

“There were other things, such as Cahill plays with a sweeper. Liam Cahill never played with a sweeper on his team in his life, ever. If it materialises, it is because of the opposition forcing it.

“When you hear people talking about that, and Cahill’s team is not coached right, I got really annoyed over that, with the effort that goes in behind the scenes with Mikey Bevans, our head coach, and the work he does with the players on the field, and loose comments come out that it looks like these players were never coached.

“It’s hard not to, but it does give you the motivation to go ahead and try and prove people wrong.

“You can’t get too sensitive over these things. You have to understand that these questions have to be asked, too, when the performances aren’t there.”

Cahill was quizzed after their final-round dead-rubber defeat to Clare whether he was the right man to take Tipperary forward. It was a question he took “umbrage” with at the time.

“Referencing Shane (Brophy)’s question after the Clare game, it probably was warranted at the time, but it’s a tougher question when it comes from one of your own.

“The reality of it is, the County Board had given me a three-year term to try and fix this thing the best I could.

“Yes, there was not much of a ship sticking out of the water, and it didn’t look like it was going to come back up any time soon, but I had huge belief in my ability to turn it around.

“I had huge belief in my coaching system, Mikey Bevans, I have huge belief in him, and Declan Laffan and his experience with what he had done on the club scene in Tipperary and Laois.

“I knew I had the right people around me, so it was a case of getting it fixed.”

Cahill felt that their 2024 focus was too attuned to injury prevention and left his players flat coming down the stretch in games.

Heading into 2025, Tipp’s league opener against Galway was billed, in some quarters, as a potential relegation play-off.

The manager felt his side, with its infusion of youth, needed to attack the league, and objected to suggestions that the team would gas out between there and championship.

“Coming off the campaign we had, there will obviously be mental scars, but for me, the key was to break it down bit by bit and start building up the momentum gradually.

“Ye guys, not all of ye, put the narrative out that Tipp would thunder into it for the league, and then they’ll fall asunder. We had to go after the league for little gains to build up that confidence.

“When you start doing that and the players see it coming through, suddenly you are going away to difficult assignments in the league in Pearse Stadium and Nowlan Park and getting results.

“Then you find yourself in a league final, and you say, right, let’s bank that as one of our goals achieved and start ramping up for the first round of the championship.

“The Limerick game in Thurles was huge for us to really start building that mental mindset again. To come through that game with something out of it, a draw, and it’s always difficult for me anyway to get one over on John Kiely, but we took a lot of confidence out of that match.

“It was the manner in which we grinded out that result that gave us the platform to put aside what people may think and say about us, that Tipp can win in the winter and can’t come summer. All those little things help to fuel the desire to get the job done.

“To keep proving people wrong is a key driver for me personally, and it is a key driver for all the players in the dressing room.”

Cahill feels the experience of reaching an All-Ireland with Waterford, albeit during Covid, helped his development as a manager.

The two-week turnaround to a final is a “nightmare” for logistics, but is a “plus” to carry momentum and keep players grounded.

It helps, too, that his newcomers have experienced a Croke Park run-out, and that supporters are back following in big numbers.

The Ballingarry boss had challenged the Tipp fans after that Galway game in January to “be brave” and back the team.

“You can get a little bit of criticism for doing the likes of that, and it was a gamble on my part, but it just reinforced the belief I had in the group of players.

“I knew when they started to portray the traits that Tipperary people want to see, and once the performances started to come, they’d come back.

“I said it to the players from day one, you have to earn the Tipperary supporters’ respect again. They want to look in at a certain level, and once you bring that, they will come. That is what has happened, and fair play to them.”