Tipperary boss Liam Cahill has vowed to scour the county for fresh talent after watching his side slip out of the Championship.
Cahill was left perplexed by his side’s showing as a season that had shown so much promise up to the final stage of the Munster round robin petered out harmlessly enough in the end, despite a late rally looking like it might push Galway to extra time.
Cahill said that at half-time he told his players that “I felt I was looking at a team that I couldn’t recognise”.
He added: “Look, I just don’t know - it’s so disappointing for the players and the effort they put in,” said Cahill.
“But when you take over a team at any grade at any level you become emotionally involved and emotions are high here now.
“I’m disappointed personally to say the least, but disappointed for everybody involved in the setup.
“Never mind getting beaten, but when you get beaten not firing the way you know you’re capable of, it makes all that bit harder to swallow.”
Cahill inherited a side that had lost all of its Championship games last year and acknowledged that progress had been made.
“I suppose we've done reasonably ok to date getting to the quarter-final of the Championship.
“But I’ll be rigorously going through the club championship this year to definitely freshen up the panel for next year, and definitely look at the young talent that’s out there to try and bring them into an environment that has the culture required to play for Tipperary, and hopefully deliver silverware in time.”
Nonetheless, Cahill wasn’t taking too much shelter in the gains made this year.
“We’re in the business of winning. And I hope today I’m not coming across as a sore loser - I’m not - but when you manage or play for Tipperary, you expect to win, like, and you expect to win playing with a bit of identity and our identity wasn’t there today and I’m not heaping the blame on the players, it’s just days like that, we had it in the last round of the Munster Championship as well.
“I’d love to be able to get the answers for it but answers for it might have to come from within rather than outside and we’ll try and find them answers as the winter unfolds. We’ve plenty of time now anyway, that’s for sure.”
