Watch: League of Ireland Preview – Huge clashes at Tallaght and Dalymount
Aidan Fitzmaurice and Seán O'Connor look ahead to a big Friday night of League of Ireland Premier Division action, with Shamrock Rovers v Galway and Bohemians v Derry City the pick of the bunch in the final round before the mid-season break.
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RTÉ News
an hour ago
- RTÉ News
'Croke Park beckons' but Liam Cahill wants more from Tipperary
Tipperary manager Liam Cahill was delighted to see his side carve out a spot in the All-Ireland SHC semi-finals but warned that they have plenty of improving to do despite an eight-point win over Galway in Saturday's quarter-final. The Premier County got the better of Galway by 1-28 to 2-17 at the TuS Gaelic Grounds to set up a last four meeting with Kilkenny on 6 July at Croke Park, which will mark Tipp's first appearance at GAA HQ since the 2019 All-Ireland final. "We're delighted now to be in the last four of the All-Ireland series. Always a pressure game, these games," Cahill told RTÉ Sport after his side's win. "Historically, Tipp and Galway are always difficult for us anyway in Tipperary, so just delighted to get the job done today." While the eight-point winning margin looks comfortable on paper and leaves them "still in the hunt" for honours, Cahill was not best pleased with all aspects of Tipperary's play. "Credit to Galway, to be fair to them, they brought everything that we thought they would early on, could've cut us up open for even two or three goal opportunities there in the first half," he said. "We were very fortunate to be on the better end of that. But we have a lot of aspects to go after our play. Our intensity petered out a lot near the end which would be a concern. "But all in all it's about qualifying, getting the job done and we've plenty to work on for two weeks' time." However, he was impressed by how his side dealt with conceding a goal to Galway early in the second half. Winning Tipperary manager Liam Cahill believes there is plenty of room for improvement from his charges as they look forward to the All-Ireland SHC semi-finals — The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) June 21, 2025 "I'm absolutely delighted with that because it's a trend of this squad of players all year. We've come out of some ferocious battles already - Ennis being an example against the All-Ireland champions," he said. "When our backs were to the wall, and again today when the goal came and brought it back to two points, I think we tacked on two or three as well then to increase that gap. "That's always encouraging when you see that from the lads." Turning his attention to the semi-final against great rivals Kilkenny, he quipped that the match-up would "increase the banter" between the two counties' supporters in the build-up and "renew the rivalry of old". "Massive game for both teams and Croke Park beckons and we're just happy to be back up the N7 after being absent for a number of years and it's exciting times again in Tipperary." Galway manager Micheál Donoghue and his side will now have to regroup after exiting the championship. But he was pleased with how his team started the game and took a longer-term view after year one of his second spell in charge. Galway remain a work in progress, according to manager Micheál Donoghue — The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) June 21, 2025 "I thought in the first half, general play wasn't too bad. I thought we created a good few goal chances and to stay in the game against a top team, you probably have to take a few of those," he said. "I thought the start of the second half, (we) rallied well, got the goal but then Tipp showed the quality, getting two scores after that and maybe we'd a couple of wides after it. "We'll rue a lot of our turnovers and against a team with the quality of Tipp, you know they're going to punish you, but for us it's very much a building project. A lot of learnings from today as cruel as it is but we'll just regroup and go again."
Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
Another sunny day in Tipperary's resurgent summer as they put Galway to the sword
About 15 minutes after the final whistle the slow-moving cordon of stewards had herded the Tipperary supporters into a peninsula of ground in front of the Mackey Stand. Over the public address they had already been warned, twice, that the water sprinklers were about to be turned on. They laughed the first time; they paid no heed the second time. Nobody was in a hurry. Nobody got wet. In Tipp's resurgent summer, this was another sunny day. Getting to Croke Park is the solemn mission of every Tipp manager, but there were times in Liam Cahill's second season when it must have seemed like another galaxy. It is little more than a year since they bottomed out against Cork in Thurles, on an excruciating day when thousands of their supporters went to ground. In that time, their rehabilitation has been remarkable. When they look again, they will find kinks in this performance . Galway were so disjointed and disorientated at times that it is impossible to use them as a reliable benchmark. But Tipp were full of pace and directness in attack and bristled with energy all over the field. They won with authority. Between the league and championship, Galway had lost four games by double-figures this year, and they were only spared that indignity here with a scrappy goal in the last minute of stoppage time. Rhys Shelly put his hand to a ball that he would easily have blocked with his hurley, and Declan McLoughlin's shot staggered over Shelly's shoulder. READ MORE In the event Galway lost by eight points, just as they had done in the Leinster final. Once again, though, they had not threatened to win. In the first half, when the game was ripe for the picking, they made four or five incisions in the Tipp cover, searching for goals. But each time the final pass was misconceived or poorly executed. Kevin Cooney forced Shelly into a save that the Tipp goalie would have been mortified not to make and Brian Concanon shot wildly, on the spin, when Conor Whelan had set him up in front of goal. [ Tipperary ease into All-Ireland semi-finals with convincing win over Galway Opens in new window ] [ Inspired 14-man Dublin beat Limerick in remarkable championship shock Opens in new window ] Tipperary's Jason Forde scores a point despite Daithí Burke of Galway. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho But when the goal they so badly needed finally arrived they did nothing with it. Five minutes into the second half Colm Molloy squirmed along the endline and beat Shelly with a fierce diagonal shot, reducing Tipp's lead to just two points. Playing with the breeze, the game was there to be seized. Tipperary grabbed it. The outstanding Andrew Ormond scored immediately from the puck-out, igniting a run of five Tipp points without reply. In the same ten-minute period Galway hit five wides. For Galway, the symmetry was crippling. Liam Cahill bemoaned Tipp's efficiency afterwards. Between play and dead balls they had a staggering 51 shots at the target operating at a 57 per cent conversion rate. In Cahill's estimation, '10 or 15' shots had been the wrong decision. To beat Kilkenny in an All-Ireland semi-final, they will need to add the guts of 10 percentage points to that number. 'We'll look at that and we'll see, but that's a very interesting stat,' said Cahill. 'Our shots off are important. Every team is chasing it now because you have to be in the 30-point bracket or the 2-25, 3-25 to have any chance of winning an All-Ireland.' Their potential for heavy scoring is obvious. In the first half, especially, Galway couldn't lay a glove on the Tipp forwards. By the break, only Darragh McCarthy had failed to score from play: the other five had scored 13 points; Jake Morris, John McGrath, Ormond and Sam O'Farrell had combined for seven assists too. Oisín O'Donoghue's introduction proves inspired, with the Tipperary full-forward finding the back of the net after an expansive attack that tears Galway apart 📺 📱 Updates - — The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) The difference between the forward lines was cohesion. The Tipp forwards moved in harmony and found each other with instant passes. Time and again, one of their shooters was isolated in a pocket of space. Every invitation to shoot was accepted. At the other end, very little of Galway's play was economical. They finished the game with 16 wides and half a dozen unrealised goal chances. Too often, they looked for an extra pass. After the Leinster final, Micheál Donoghue was adamant that Galway had not played the way they had planned, and that was surely the case again. After Henry Shefflin's three years in charge, this Galway team urgently needed an identity and a sustainable way of playing. This season, they never reached those goals. Just eight of Galway's scores came from play and they coughed up 1-14 from turnovers. In a knock-out game, against a team from their peer group, all of that was unbearable. 'Look today is raw,' said Donoghue. 'Today will hurt. In terms of where we are, where they came from last year, today might not be the right day to say it is a step forward [but] I think we have made a step forward. There are huge learnings to take from the season. We will reflect on that and regroup again.' Maybe they have bottomed out. Tipp know how that feels. They made a new start.
Irish Daily Mirror
3 hours ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
Dessie Farrell on Con O'Callaghan absence and his quarter-final chances
Dessie Farrell decided to 'run the gauntlet' by not calling on Con O'Callaghan as Dublin held off Cork to reach the All-Ireland quarter-final. O'Callaghan was replaced in the team by Lorcan O'Dell and though Dublin were never comfortable in a 1-19 to 1-16 victory over John Cleary's side, the captain was held in reserve throughout, with Farrell effectively admitting that it was with next weekend's quarter-final in mind. The Cuala man picked up a hamstring injury in the win over Galway last month and sat out the loss to Armagh before returning for the crucial win over Derry last weekend. Farrell explained: 'We took the decision not to bring him on there. We sort of run the gauntlet on it a little bit for the last 10 minutes or so. 'Thankfully, that decision worked out, and we gave him an extra seven days to recover, and he should be good for the next day.' The Dublin boss said that if his side were trailing coming down the stretch, he would have called on his talisman. 'Yeah, that was the plan. It's not to say that we knew this wouldn't be a tight affair, but we were just going to hope that we had enough. 'There were conversations with the coaches with a couple of minutes to go. We just decided to hold on. If it was a little bit tighter, I think you would have seen him come in for sure, yeah.' Dublin will play one of Meath, Monaghan or Tyrone in the last eight and Farrell conceded that the showing here 'wasn't a classic performance by any stretch'. He added: 'But it was one where we needed to show a bit of character and dig deep, and thankfully the lads did that.' 'I won't say anything at the moment, my term is up now, I've been four years in it, and as anyone will know it's tough going, but look, we'll see during the week, or we'll talk to the relevant parties or whatever, but look, at this stage now, my term is up, so we'll see what the future holds going forward.' Meanwhile, Cork boss Cleary said that he was 'gutted' at the outcome having bossed the game for long periods, particularly in the first half, while he was frustrated at the performance of referee Seán Hurson. He said: 'I don't like criticising referees, but some of them (decisions) were three feet from me and I could not understand it. And then when it happened the other way, Dublin seemed to get them. 'It was one off the ball then, and we were looking down the first half, the exact same thing was happening, and we didn't get any of them. So we'd be disappointed about that, but we're out of the Championship now, bitterly disappointed at this stage, and the year is over.' Cleary, who took the job on an interim basis in 2022 before being handed a three-year term, was reluctant to speak on his future.
