REACTION: Tipp boss Kelly lauds players and 'family' nature of panel after league win

As finishes to finals can go, it doesn’t get much more tense than what happened in Croke Park on Sunday afternoon.
Just as Carrie Dolan was lining up that late free to level the game, you need only have panned to different areas of the pitch to see the tormented figures of blue and gold to see the stress levels, as the usually accurate free-taker stood over the ball.

“It was hard to know,” said Denis Kelly on whether he felt the lead had slipped as Galway lined up the late free.

“She‘s usually deadly but the rain just started coming down and I think someone must have been looking down on us; smiling down on top of us!

“It started to come at just the right time and Julieanne (Bourke) was dancing in front of her and it could have gone anywhere but thankfully it just went wide.

“I felt sorry for Carrie (Dolan) but at the same time, they’ve won their fair share, and lady luck made sure that we got the rub of the green today and we’re thankful for that,” he added.

You would have been hard-pressed to find a happier man in Ireland than Tipperary camogie boss Denis Kelly on Sunday afternoon in the aftermath of his team’s nerve-wracking one-point win over Galway in Croke Park.

The Toomevara man was elated with his side’s win and it represents a huge achievement for this group of players, even allowing for the ambition and expectations of the group going into the rest of this year’s campaign.

“Yeah, it’s great. We’re delighted,” Kelly told reporters after the game.

“It was edge-of-the-seat stuff. We know Galway are a serious outfit and we knew they’d push us to the wire and they really did.

“We had to pull everything out to get over that line but look, we are absolutely thrilled and I’m delighted for the girls. They’re a serious bunch and we’re very much like a family at this stage.

Someone put it into our group this morning, ‘let's go win with our family’ and we’re after doing that so it’s great.

“It is just the league but it’s great to get a trophy on the table!” Tipperary teams have suffered huge disappointments in recent years in Croke Park and across different competitions just when it looked like the team and panel were on the right path, but invariably, something always seemed to go wrong and the fact that they got their rub of the green on this occasion was a welcomed happening and it could be a huge psychological boon for the whole set up according to Kelly.

“Last year we got the Munster championship and we’ve now managed to add a league title to that, so slowly we’re building momentum.

“You’re not going to suddenly turn up and start winning things out of nowhere, so by the breeze we’re getting there, and this is another stepping stone.

“It’s great to get to Croke Park and get our routine going, so we’ll be looking to get back here for the quarter-final or semi-final stages and it’s just great to be up here and getting the experience of this and you just can’t beat winning,” he concluded.