Ryan died suddenly as the age of 56<\/a> as he prepared for his second year in charge of the Premier County.<\/p>\nA county board meeting will ratify a three-year term for Moyle Rovers clubman Fitzgerald, who previously spent three seasons in charge of Tipperary’s Under-20 side and also managed their minors.<\/p>\n
“Nobody likes moving on in these circumstances,” said Tipperary CEO Murtagh Brennan.<\/p>\n
“When you\u2019re getting league draft fixtures sent out you know you\u2019re getting close to the new season and you have to.”<\/p>\n
Fitzgerald spent nearly a decade in the middle of the park for Tipp and won a Division 3 title, a Tommy Murphy Cup and a McGrath Cup in his time, playing alongside Ryan in that spell.<\/p>\n
His U-20s came agonisingly close to securing a Munster final spot earlier this year, but a last-gasp contentious Cork free in their draw at SuperValu P\u00e1irc U\u00ed Chaoimh saw the Rebels progress instead.<\/p>\n
“Niall knows the county set-up very well and has put a lot into Tipperary football,” Brennan said of the incoming boss.<\/p>\n
“He\u2019d know a lot of the younger players, obviously, having worked with the U20s for those couple of seasons.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Brennan said the scenes after Clonmel\u2019s county final win over Kilsheelan-Kilcash last weekend were special.<\/p>\n
Ryan\u2019s son Shane was in goals for the Commercials and, as well as being emotionally embraced by his team-mates following the game, a number of the opposition players made their way to sympathise with him.<\/p>\n
“Shane is very well got, our inter-county goalkeeper and a lovely guy.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s really tough for everyone but he handled himself so well. It was lovely to see that too.”<\/p>\n
Watch Athy v Summerhill in the AIB Leinster Club Football Championship on Saturday from 5pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tipperary will appoint Niall Fitzgerald as their new senior football manager this evening, following the death of Philly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-137663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}