Colm Bonnar said that Tipperary were left “shell-shocked” following their heavy defeat to Cork.
While it was widely acknowledged that the team was entering a transitional phase as a number of stalwarts moved on and injuries mounted up, four defeats from four, including two home losses that were particularly hard to stomach, and a scoring difference of -31 is probably beyond what even the most pessimistic observers would have predicted.
To his credit, Bonnar didn’t reach for the changing of the guard as an excuse.
“I said this thing could happen very quickly and I still believe that when a Tipp player puts on a jersey, they should be good enough to compete well but to go down like we did today, no, we’re shell-shocked,” said Bonnar, who appealed to the Tipp public to keep faith with the players.
“They’ve given so much, they’ve trained so hard. When you look at the display, it’s the same team that played Limerick only two weeks ago and gave so much and today is not what we wanted. So yeah, we need to back each other up.
“We can’t take any positives out of today. We can take positives out of a lot of other days. We can take positives out of the younger lads that came in and so many in terms of their Championship debut and getting a run but today, no, we can’t take anything from today and that’s why it’s so hard.”
The Cork goal straight after Noel McGrath’s missed 11th minute penalty was significant in the context of the match but, as Bonnar said, it shouldn’t have sounded the death knell so early in the game.
“Look, it was six-point turnaround and it does take a while to get that. Cork were building momentum pretty quickly and coming at us but it would have just given us the confidence to keep shooting or to keep the pressure on. You don’t expect it to go the way it did.
“Cork upped the ante hugely. Whether it was them or us getting deflated, I don’t think so because there was too much at stake here and it was too early in the game.”
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