‘We tend to love a good failure in Tipp. That is what disappoints me the most’ – Liam Cahill hits back at critics

Taking a swipe at his critics in the county he declared: “We tend to love a good failure in Tipp. That is what disappoints me the most. We tend to love a good failure.”

Describing Munster championship as the ‘province of death’, he added: “Really delighted that the players and we as a group got our heads around a performance last weekend that wasn’t acceptable. We have no issue with that. Some of the analysis was very warranted, absolutely it was warranted, but some of it wasn’t.

“Really proud of the way we battled right to the end from a game that was more or less gone from us. We were given chances to win the game prior to that, to be fair, but really proud of the way we as a group, this bunch of players, as management and backroom team, everyone associated with the set-up circled the wagons this week.

“We are really grateful to the supporters in the stands today, they were absolutely superb. They’ll back this team to the hilt every day once we fight. That’s the main thing. And we fought for everything today. We as a group fought and that’s all we look for.”

Reflecting again on their 15-point loss to Limerick in round one Cahill said: “The hurt came from within last week. Your emotions go bananas when things go wrong on the big stage in a Tipperary jersey. We as a group never intend to not fight or die in our boots on the field. We never intend to do that.

“We always intend to come and make the people of Tipperary proud to look in at their flagship team perform. So, we took massive ownership of what happened last weekend. We took massive ownership of it because we had to.

“We own that for the rest of our lives. I own, maybe, some of my comments in the aftermath. I own that and it weighed heavy. We just draw a line under that now and go forward with this performance and still try and make sure that we qualify out of this province of death in Munster.

“Let's see can we gather a couple more points. There are four more still on offer. If we can perform again, and we'll have to perform to a real decent level again, even better than we performed today obviously to have any chance of progressing in the championship. That is our golden objective over the next two weeks.”

Cahill agreed that the Tipperary substitutes made an important contribution.

“Without our bench today, we'd be going home empty-handed. The ever-warrior Bonner (Maher) came on there, John McGrath was top-class, young (Seanie) Kenneally (who scored 1-1), Darragh Stakelum made his championship debut, he was excellent today. He never gave up.

“We have good young lads coming in Tipperary. Our U20s were phenomenal last night, and they are in a Munster final. We tend to love a good failure in Tipp. That is what disappoints me the most. We tend to love a good failure.

“Really, we should be privileged in the position we are in. We are not where we want to be. Of course, we want to be winning All-Irelands and dining at the top table every year.

“But we are where we are and we have a lot of really good people and good, top-class players fighting to achieve that and get back to the top table as I have said,” he said.