Tipperary under 20 hurling manager Brendan Cummins played down the negative talk about him and his players in advance of their impressive Munster Championship opening round win on Friday evening.
Despite a talented group of players with All-Ireland Minor and Harty Cup medal winners, expectation levels were low, based on challenge match results but they showed their quality when it mattered most, in championship.
“It doesn’t matter,” Cummins said of the chatter in recent months.
“When those lads go home, they meet their families and that is going to be the most important feedback they are going to get. Anything else that goes on anywhere else in the world is just noise and it doesn’t matter to those young men.
“I have 22 years of my life playing with Tipp, so I know what it is like, they know what it is like, it is just the way it is. When I am up in the stand watching the under 17’s last night, I was shouting and roaring, and that is it, it’s all noise.
“It doesn’t matter because if we lost tonight, they would be jumping on us and now we have won we are grand for another week, so we have to perform again to avoid people jumping on us and that is the way and the law of the jungle and there is no problem with that, and those young men in there don’t mind that either.”
Reflecting on the performance against Limerick, Cummins was pleased by the workrate and application of the players.
“The lads ran themselves into the ground,” he added.
“You saw for a finish we had guys falling down all over the place (injury) and Paddy (McCormack) was in hard luck, he barely mis-timed a tackle.
“It’s very pleasing to come down here and get a win like that.”
“It took us a bit of time to get into it. When they got the goal, I was happy when we won the next puckout as we said beforehand, we were going to come up against adversity and what our reaction would be, and I was pleased it was really strong. Win, lose or draw, once we did that, we’d see what the scoreboard looks like and thankfully it was in our favour.”
However, Cummins was keen to stress that it was just one game and must back it up when they head to Dungarvan to play Waterford this Friday evening, and subsequent games.
“You can talk tactics all you like, hurling is about x-factor and is what you can get out of yourself,” he added.
“But the thing is we have to do that again (against Waterford) and then have a couple of weeks off doing it again (Clare) and again (Cork) and that is the challenge for my management team to get the lads ready to perform again.
“It might not be as well the next day, but we just have to find a way because I know Waterford are going to be hurting after what happened against Cork the last day. They are going to be all in. Ken McGrath is a proud Waterford man, along with Kevin Moran and Dan Shanahan so they are going to be fired up, so we are very clear about what is going to happen on Friday night again.”
The Tipperary Under 20 Hurlers will play their second game in O'Neills.com 2024 Munster Championship this Friday evening @ 7pm in Fraher Field, Dungarvan, when they play Waterford.
Manager Brendan Cummins has named the following starting 15 and subs for the game with two changes to the starting line-up that defeated Limerick with Jack Quinlan coming in at corner back for Chris O'Donnell while Eoin Craddock comes into the attack for the suspended Paddy McCormack.
