David Power has admitted that Tipperary got carried away approaching last year’s Allianz Football League following their historic Munster title success.
Having claimed provincial honours for the first time since 1935 in remarkable circumstances on the centenary weekend of Bloody Sunday in November 2020, Tipp struggled in Division Three when the League finally got underway in May of last year.
Placed in a group with Limerick, Wicklow and Offaly, they lost two of their three games before going under to Longford in a subsequent relegation play-off to send them to Division Four.
With Cavan, who also won a rare Ulster title on the same day as Tipperary toppled Cork 14 months ago, for company in the basement division, achieving promotion may not be straightforward and manager Power is not looking too far down the track after last year’s calamity with a trip to Waterford first up on Sunday.
He said: “I think we're going to come across a lot of defensive systems over the course of the League and patience is going to be very, very key.
“The one thing we've learned is just take one game at a time. The way I'm looking at it is that we're breaking it up into three blocks.
“We have Waterford, Leitrim, then we've a week off and then we have Wexford and Sligo, then we've a week off and we have Cavan, Carlow and London.
“I think last year, and I have no problem taking the blame, after the Munster final win I think we were all getting excited in Tipp that we were going to get promoted out of Division Three and look what happened, we ended up getting relegated to Division Four so the big thing that we're going to be looking at this year is we'll be certainly taking absolutely no team for granted in Division Four.
“Waterford have a new management team with Ephie Fitzgerald and Peter Leahy and I'm sure they're going to be waiting there for us down in Dungarvan which is going to be a tough venue to go to and Waterford certainly won't fear Tipperary.”
Entering the 2022 season as a Division Four team, when they started out last year as Munster champions means that their confidence has suffered considerably, Power admits.
“Absolutely. I suppose the big thing for me was the backroom team; we stuck together. It was hard; probably the worst day was up in Longford, we were just terrible.
“I was saying to myself, ‘What the hell, what is happening? We go from the highs down in Cork to this’, and that is not being disrespectful to Longford, it was just that we were terrible.
“And I suppose we really did pick it up before Kerry because if we didn’t, and I know we got well beaten by Kerry I suppose but I thought we were very competitive against them for a good part of that game, they would have been running out of scoreboard.
“That game gave me hope. I suppose there are times when you have to say, sport can be cruel and we have to move on but over the last couple of months now I am kind of getting the energy back in terms of we are after getting new blood in.”
And Power says that he hasn’t had to go twisting players’ arms to fill out his panel.
“The buy-in from all the new players – I’ve got very few ‘nos’. People still want to play football for Tipperary.”
Get the latest sports headlines straight to your inbox by signing up for free email alerts
