IT’S QUITE POSSIBLE Tipperary have never looked forward to a match against Kilkenny quite as much, not in the Brian Cody era anyway.
The Premier are looking to extend their winning run to a ninth straight competitive game tonight against Cody’s men, who’ve picked up just one victory in their opening three league ties.
Tipp are undoubtedly the form team heading into this contest. Since their 2-13 to 0-18 defeat to Clare in the league quarter-final last April, they’ve won eight consecutive games, (five in championship and three in league) and they’ve done it by an average of 8.8 points.
Cork, Limerick, Waterford (twice), Galway, Kilkenny, Dublin and Clare have all come up short against Michael Ryan’s side in the last 10 months.
Only twice did a county come within five points of Tipperary during that run – Limerick lost by two in Munster and Galway were pipped by a point in the All-Ireland semi-final.
Win tonight and Ryan will become just the second Tipperary manager to get the better of Brian Cody twice in the space of six months.
Liam Sheedy managed the feat in 2010, when Tipperary defeated Kilkenny by four points in the league and backed it up with a glorious 4-17 to 1-18 victory the following September.
Over the years, Cody has firmly held the upper hand in these contests. Of the 30 previous league and championship meetings, Kilkenny’s record stands at 20-8 with two draws.
Ryan’s seven predecessors managed just seven wins between them against Kilkenny since 1999, although the Cats are no longer the superpower of old.
Tonight provides Tipperary the opportunity to confirm their status as hurling’s new elite force. The noise coming out the Premier since their All-Ireland win indicates they’re highly motivated to put together their first back-to-back All-Irelands since 1965.
In contrast to 2011, when they lost their first two league games, Tipperary are sitting pretty on top of Division 1A after opening the campaign with three convincing wins.
Ryan has taken a leaf out of the Jim Gavin playbook by sharing league minutes around his squad in a bid to intensity competition for places.
The current Dublin football squad and the four-in-a-row Kilkenny side of the last decade are recent examples of teams who were driven by the internal pressure to keep jersey. Only the strong survived.
“You need competition all the time because if we stayed going the way we did last year we are not going to get back to the levels we were at,” skipper Padraic Maher told the Irish Examiner last week.
“We need to try and improve on every aspect and that’s our aim at the moment. Every player needs to push and that what’s going on. We will try and keep that going for the rest of the league and see where that brings us.”
Tipperary are beginning to get to the level Dublin are at in football. Ryan has chopped and changed his lineup so far this spring with Daragh Mooney, Tomas Hamill, Donagh Maher, Joe O’Dwyer, Steven O’Brien and Aidan McCormack all logging significant minutes as he looks to deepen his panel.
In spite of the tinkering, the Premier haven’t skipped a beat.
They went to Walsh Park and picked off Waterford, the second best team in the country at present, despite starting without Seamus Callanan, Noel McGrath and John O’Dwyer.
With five minutes to go in that game, corner-back Joe O’Dwyer went down with an injury. Michael Ryan turned to his bench and sent on experienced defender Michael Cahill, with All-Star centre-back Ronan Maher left looking on as an unused substitute.
Maher may have been six days away from a Fitzgibbon Cup final with Mary I, but no other side in the country could afford to let an All-Star sit-out such a key game in the top flight.
Then you take into account Niall O’Meara’s reaction to being subbed early in the second-half of Tipperary’s win over the Banner last weekend.
O’Meara sustained a heavy hit to the head and was withdrawn as a precaution, but he flung his helmet to the ground in anger.
It wasn’t an act of disrespect towards the management, rather a sign of frustration. Opportunities to impress in the blue and gold will become less frequent as the summer nears.
The more established names are likely to return tonight as Tipperary look to confirm their superiority over the Cats.
The leaders in the squad are beginning to enter their prime and have the experience of the 2011 failure at the back of their minds.
Callanan, John O’Dwyer, Padraic Maher, Brendan Maher and Noel McGrath will understand the enormity of laying down another marker tonight.
“We had the edge over Tipp in pretty much every game of consequence between 2011 and 2015, but now they have the psychological advantage,” Kilkenny legend Richie Power wrote in his column on RTÉ.ie this week.
“If Tipperary hit form I’d be very worried by what they could do. They’re doing everything right and the strength of their squad is frightening to the rest of the country.
“It all reminds me of Kilkenny six or seven years ago.”
Tonight, we’ll find out if Tipperary really are head and shoulders above the rest.
- Tipperary v Kilkenny, Division 1A, Semple Stadium, Thurles, 7pm [Live eir Sport 2]
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