Liam Cahill can’t pretend it doesn’t matter. When it comes to Tipperary hurling – the highs, the lows – he continues to puck every ball.
The blue and gold flags and bunting are flying again around Thurles and Nenagh and beyond, but only a few months ago it seemed the wind had gone out of Tipp’s sails.
It wasn’t quite a winter of discontent but few around the county believed they’d be scrambling for All-Ireland final tickets come July.
Cahill’s first two years at the helm of his native county were challenging – from eight championship games over 2023 and 2024 they managed just one win, losing four and drawing three.
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When asked at the end of the 2024 championship whether he believed he was the right man to take Tipperary forward, Cahill defended himself robustly. Now, the difficult graft of three years is starting to play out for all to see inside the white lines.
“You have to understand that these questions have to be asked, too, when the performances aren’t there,” concedes Cahill. “It probably was warranted at the time. The reality of it is the county board had given me a three-year term to try to 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 and Declan Laffan. I knew I had the right people around me, so it was a case of getting it fixed.”
Despite his unwavering belief, some of the criticism and barstool chattering doing the rounds did sting the man, who has managed the county to All-Ireland minor, under-21 and under-20 titles.
“I suppose the ones around 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,” he says.
“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 like that 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 teams are not coached right’. I got really annoyed over that.
“It’s hard not to, but it does give you the motivation to go ahead and try to prove people wrong.”
Tipperary have been proving many of the doubters wrong this season. They contested the National League final in April and on Sunday will face Cork in the first ever All-Ireland SHC final between the counties.
But some difficult decisions had to be made along the path to this stage: several experienced players either stepped away or were moved on while new players were introduced and given a shake.
“The reality of it is at the time I came in in 2023 most people in Tipperary knew that there was a big change coming. Unfortunately, we had a number of really top-class players for the last decade who were just coming towards the end of their intercounty careers, and the gap between what was needed to come in and replace them wasn’t maybe fully ready at the time.
“The meetings I had, and the discussions I had, when I accepted the role would have been around absolutely having time, to be given an opportunity and a chance and having patience. But unfortunately when you’re in a county as demanding as Tipperary not everybody sees that and understands that.
“It’s not too different to Kerry from a football perspective, the demands are really high, so that brings added pressure as well. The county board agreed a three-year term initially and in fairness to them they stood by me and backed me.”
Cahill previously referenced the inspiration taken from watching 13-man Tipperary beat Kilkenny in last year’s All-Ireland minor final at Nowlan Park. He wanted his team to harness that spirit, and it manifested itself in the manner of their semi-final victory over Kilkenny two weeks ago.
“The minor win gave us a great sense of pride, but also a great sense of realisation as a senior squad and senior management team that we need to be doing that from where we’re at, and the responsibility we have to the jersey.
“That has to come from the top down, we should be inspiring young fellows rather than they inspiring us. The players have seen what’s now required, and have committed to it, and thankfully we’re bringing it out ourselves in our performances to date.
“We’ve come through some really tough games with big performances and big moments in matches. So, this is not a flash in the pan from this group of players, they’re doing it consistently throughout the 2025 season. I think we’ll gain huge encouragement from that.
“It will be something important for us if we can bring this thing down to the last five or 10 minutes of the All-Ireland final and we’re still in the hunt, I think we will have huge resilience and belief in our ability to get the job done.”
