This.
Leary should have known better. Break the tackle, retain the possession. When lads like Connors get momentum they only have 1 gear.
Managers plan, players implement. In the overall scheme of things Iâm apportioning the majority of the blame to the players for this collapse. There was a âNicky contact lensesâ type intervention required here but I donât think that level of maturity is built into this group yet. Pat Ryan needs to wield the axe a bit lower ahead of 2026.
Will Tipp embrace playing with a sweeper after this?
Should cork have just tapped over a few points instead of trying to work unlikely goals from the 60th minute?
Like they werenât going to win anyway, but 1-23 and scoring 6/7 points in the 2nd half would be a fair lot better than the embarrassment of 2 bloody points.
Mark landers blamed the ref 
The cunt should take a portion of blame. The bluster out of him the past two years was cruel. White pants man gets his opinion off Landers. No other county has a bigger fool in the media. He inflated the hype balloon.
When can we move in together? Rent or buy, that doesnât matter
One of the great Irish expressions, Sound Man!
Extraordinary alright, but not in a good way
Had he two hawkeye calls on Sunday from fairly standard positions?
He had one for sure. Just not a greater shooterâŚ
In 2018 Cork were freewheeling and Fitzgibbon started goading Richie English and the game turned on that goading.
Sunday you had Horgan goading Shelly and Dalton forcing his way down the tunnel at half when the stewards were trying to stop him.
Thatâs where it was lost in 2018 and again in 2025.
I see somebody say Horgan doesnât deserve an all Ireland.
Then you see landers with one
Life is unfair
Worse again he was captain to lift it. He had a good speech to his credit.
Is Liam sheedy friends with Liam Cahill? Sheedy seems genuinely delighted for Cahill which is a small bit surprising given sheedy was the last man in before him. Usually thereâs an awkward phase.
Sheedy was waiting, and I mean waiting for Cahill to step away so he could have the Senior Job.
Iâd say Cahill was aware of many murmurings of Sheedy wanting it. I also get the impression Sheedy is delighted for the players moreso than management.
Greatness isnt defined by All Ireland. Eric Lowdnes has an All Ireland or two.
Itâs not who you are underneath, itâs what you do that defines you. Aidan O Shea is a great.
Granted Horgan isnt.
Thereâs a white pants man? Brave enough if heâs on the stout
Colm Bonnar was manager for one historically unsuccessful season in between the two Liams.
Just watched it back and the crowd shots of Cork supporters during that period from minute 40-55 is astonishing television. OâDonnell can be mouthread to say, âtheyâre fuckedâ when Cahalane is getting ready to come on.
Two key monents for me were Dalton being whipped and Robert Doyle taking Alan Connolly for a spin down under the Cusack Stand.
Dalton being sent to the bench by Willie Connors was humiliating in the sense he had to jog all the way across from the Cusack side to the dugout. Given the incident at half time, it was a real, âwe have you now momentâ. What should have been a big moment for Cork getting Harnedy on the pitch didnt have any sort of desired impact. Once Connors didnt hit Harnedy when he came on, it was a good outcome for Tipp.
Doyle taking Connolly for a spin down the Cusack was a, âwhat the fuck is happening here momentâ. Doyle may have ended up hitting a wide from the puckout but the sight of Connolly on the back foot chasing back inside his own half was real, âweâre up shit creek nowâ stuff.
I think everyone in Tipp is just relieved that the decade has been ticked off and our proud record continues on into the 2030âs.
There was genuine concern we were in trouble and all hands were on deck to ensure weâd win one by 2029. Whether that be with Cahill/Sheedy/Cummins/Woodlock.
The pressure is now well and truly off.
I think Loughnane or Tom Ryan could have made this point in a short paragraph
Tue, 22 Jul, 2025 - 03:58
[.
The Cork sideline has to be streamlined and smarter and probably smaller in 2026.
Ever before they had to make an in-game decision like that last Sunday, Cork were tactically outsmarted by Liam Cahill. There is a natural inclination when you get to an All-Ireland final and believe so much in the Process for you to stick to the process and everything else that got you there.
But the reality, which Cahill was wise to, is that to win an All-Ireland final, you have to have processes within that process. You almost always have to have a tactical curveball kept in reserve for All-Ireland final day. Something the opposition wasnât expecting.
Itâs how Cork won their last All-Ireland; for the 2005 final Donal Ăg Cusack, instead of opting for his trademark short puckouts, went long and direct towards Brian Corcoran, throwing Galway off-guard just as Mayo were the year before when Kerry bombed diagonal ball into Johnny Crowley.
It may still be true that you cannot win an All-Ireland playing a sweeper â from April to late July. But Tipp showed you can win a key one-off game playing one.
Cork will inevitably now have to scrutinise how they were set up, trained and practised for such an eventuality. They might have talked about encountering a sweeper, but did they practise it? Or if they did practise for it, did they practise for it under pressure?
In the first half the game was being played on Tippâs terms but Cork coped reasonably well with that sweeper. While they occasionally played some aimless ball into the full-forward line that was picked off by Bryan OâMeara, more often than not they did the right thing.
Play it through the lines. Not force it into the inside trio who still managed a point each. Instead have your midfield and half-forwards pick off the scores.
In the second half Cork deviated from all that, lumping ball upon ball on top of Ronan Maher. Whenever they did play it through the lines it was all down the Hogan Stand side; they didnât or couldnât work the ball to the centre channel where they could get off high-percentage shots.
Cork manager Pat Ryan during the closing stages of the GAA Hurling All-Ireland Senior Championship final. Pic: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile.
Such a systems failure suggested a mental as much as a tactical faulty process. Gary Keegan has been lauded by this column as much as anyone over the past decade and has rightly been praised by this group of Cork players for his work with them.
But the question needs to be asked: can you honestly say youâve earned the right to win an All-Ireland by remote when your opposite number, Cathal Sheridan in this case, has been full-time embedded with the opposition?
When heâs there in the dressing room, when heâs at most games, when heâs on the team bus or driving home in his car from a league game and a free he saw missed rankles with him and heâs thinking of suitable interventions?
Keegan may still be the best in that space but he is at his best when embedded in a setup like he is with the Ireland and currently the Lions setup.
This has been his sixth season involved with the Cork hurlers. He helped turn the ship around in 2017 after the lowpoint that was 2016, stayed on to help John Meyler win the Munster title of 2018, while Kieran Kingston brought him back in for 2022 after Sheridan was either not asked or coaxed back as the team performance coach following the 2021 final collapse against Limerick.
If he is on board for 2026 he needs to be fully on board.
With or without him, the Cork process needs to get more primal. While Cork were taking deep breaths, Tipp were breathing fire. There is a tendency to err on the side of being relaxed over revved up on a big occasion like an All-Ireland final, to downplay the outcome and emotion, tiptoe around it. But sometimes you need to spell it out.
Before Cork went out for the second half of the 2004 All Ireland final, Brian Corcoran urged his teammates to remember the hurt of the previous yearâs loss, then shouldered into Diarmuid OâSullivan.
Youâre the best full back in the country but youâve to show it out there. He pointed at and challenged every teammate. Do we want to be crying in a huddle again in 40 minutes time or collecting that cup?
Were Cork players similarly or suitably challenged at half time last Sunday and primed to be the hunters rather than the hunted?
Certain Cork players appeared too casual on Sunday under the mistaken assumption that is their individual zone of optimal functioning as sport psychologists would term it.
Brian Hayes and Alan Connolly may be naturally relaxed individuals, which works for them in general, but to win All-Irelands do they need to bring it up a notch? Both have been instrumental to Corkâs revival since April 2024 but they need to realise what got them and Cork here wonât get them all the way.
In the lead up to Tipperaryâs second goal, Connolly was the nearest man to Michael Breen. A Tipperary forward in that situation would have dashed towards Breen, flailing their hurley. While they might not have blocked him down, theyâd have affected his line of vision, even his strike.
Connolly just casually jogged in Breenâs direction, allowing Breen to pick out and find John McGrath to win the penalty that resulted in Downeyâs second yellow card, McCarthyâs goal, the match itself.
Right there, thatâs faulty process. How was Connolly so far off his man? How was he so far off the required intensity and aggression required to win an All-Ireland?
You could keep going on. Cork had no Ronan Maher last Sunday. Rob Downey has the potential to be that player but his upper body still isnât as physically developed as youâd expect of a player of his training age and under as brilliant a S&C lead as Ian Jones.
Shortly after Downeyâs goal in last yearâs final, Patrick Horgan missed a free that would have put Cork eight points up. Repeatedly throughout this yearâs championship he has left at least one free behind him. Yet he stayed on the frees.
The test and wisdom of that all came down to the free he had when Tim OâMahony won a free right upon the second-half throw-in. Steinerâs model tells us that was a faulty process.
Horgan has been instrumental to the Cork revival â only for his late penalty against Limerick, Cork donât even get back to the last game of either 2024 or 2025 â and has been one of the gameâs dedicated practice players.
But after Dublinâs meltdown against Donegal in 2014, Jim Gavin made the call: Bernard Brogan, while still Dublinâs best finisher from play, was not clinical enough from the frees to remain on them; a dead-eye dead-ball specialist in Dean Rock was duly elevated to the starting 15.
Do Cork go the same way now with Ben Cunningham? Do they even make the bigger call and Horgan goes the same way as Jason Sherlock and Ciaran Whelan after the startled earwigs affair of 2009?
Whoever takes the frees for Cork going forward need to be practising frees for pressure and in the most optimal way possible which clearly wasnât the case in 2025.
One of the local universities, MTU, is starting a full-time taught masters in skill acquisition. Will the Cork setup avail of the expertise of the practitioners rolling out that course? Or get some of its own coaching staff to enlist on it?
The last Cork team to deliver Liam MacCarthy abided by the refrain that the inches they needed were all around them. The Cork setup of 2026 needs to be similarly alert and ravenous for them.