How Tipp learned lessons from earlier Cork losses to derail favourites for Liam MacCarthy

Signs, signposts, signals and evidence invariably frame opinion but the signs, signposts and signals don’t always necessarily provide enough evidence to properly shape that opinion.

When Cork hammered Tipperary in the second match of the Munster round robin in late April, the impressive manner of the victory just added to the general conviction that Cork had Tipperary’s number.

Cork had already whipped Tipp in the league final just three weeks earlier. They’d obliterated them in the championship in May 2024. It didn’t seem to matter that Tipp had a man sent off, Darragh McCarthy, in the opening seconds of that game last April, which ruined the match before it even began – another Cork rout provided more than enough evidence to suggest that Cork were just far better than Tipp. Full stop.

Yet there was more than enough evidence from that match to suggest that Tipp were far closer to Cork than everyone thought. 

Very few people went digging deep enough to locate it because they didn’t believe it to be enough of a meaningful exercise.

When Cork did meet Tipp again in the All-Ireland final, it was easy to forget that – despite being overran – Tipp did score 0-24 in Páirc Uí Chaoimh in late April. Cork had out-goaled Tipp 7-0 in both the league final and that round robin meeting, but Tipp rediscovered their goalscoring mojo afterwards to such an impressive degree that Cork were definitely going to need more goals than Tipp in the All-Ireland final - because Tipp had already proved that they could match Cork with white flags.

Given the goalscoring form Tipp were in, and the confidence they took raising four green flags against Kilkenny in the semi-final, Tipp were always going to score goals in the final. Especially when Cork were going to give up goalscoring chances; Dublin scored two goals and could have had at least three more in the All-Ireland semi-final.

Everything was going to come down to how much Tipp could limit Cork’s goal threat at the other end of the field but Tipp had had two games to learn from those lessons, reorganise and sort out better match-ups. And they did.

SIGNS

With Cork, the signs and signposts don’t always lead to where everybody, outside of the opposition, thinks they will. Cork were also expected to out-goal Clare in the 2024 All-Ireland, but they didn’t. It was the same pattern again in the 2025 final when Cork were again out-goaled 3-1.

Cork went into the final in such devastating form that few were looking for any worrying signposts or signals from the past that had seen this side career off the road and into the ditch.

Cork appeared to be on a whole new path but how could anybody have ignored the 12-point lead that Cork had coughed up against Clare in round 1, or the mauling that they’d taken from Limerick in round 3 in Munster?

Cork could claim that they didn’t need to win either of those games but was that really the form of a team that were deemed to be almost unbeatable ahead of the All-Ireland final? And when Tipp dialled up the heat in that match, the cracks which had appeared earlier in the summer opened up into a canyon.

It was an incredulous end to what was an average championship in comparison to other years. 

Munster produced an incredible final between Cork and Limerick, a game Cork won on penalties, but the overall standard and entertainment was way down on other years.

Outside of the final, the southern championship only produced two high-quality matches; Tipperary-Limerick and Clare-Tipperary. Clare-Cork was a captivating second half in how Clare stormed back to claim a draw, and almost a win, but Cork did what they liked in a flat first half. The other two headline round robin matches – Cork/Tipp and Cork/Limerick – were total blowouts.

Leinster was worse, with only two matches of sustained quality; Dublin-Offaly and Dublin-Wexford. Dublin-Kilkenny produced an enthralling last 20 minutes but Kilkenny had led that match by 16 points at one stage of the second half before they switched off and Dublin finally switched on.

The Wexford-Kilkenny game – which has always been a final round highlight in Leinster – never got a chance to produce that drama because it was a dead rubber. Wexford were already gone while Kilkenny put out their second team. The Galway-Kilkenny Leinster final was another poor showing.

Galway’s miserable summer was encapsulated by another miserable performance in the All-Ireland quarter-final against Tipperary not long after Dublin had blown the roof off the championship when sacking Limerick in Croke Park to record one of the biggest shocks in the history of hurling.

RUTHLESS

Cork ruthlessly put Dublin to the sword the day before Tipp and Kilkenny produced an entertaining game that Tipp won with 14 men. Tipp showed that afternoon that there was something different about them this season, the turning point of which was going to Cusack Park and taking out the All-Ireland champions, Clare, in round 3.

Tipp had shown signs of those qualities in Páirc Uí Chaoimh two weeks earlier but Cork’s huge margin of victory had covered over that evidence. And when the All-Ireland final rolled around, few were looking for any traces of that evidence.

Nobody could see beyond Cork but there were enough signposts to suggest that Tipp could drive Cork off the road. 

Nobody though, could have predicted that Cork would crash head first into a brick wall.