As the action in the Allianz National Hurling League got underway in January, Tipperary were the team to beat as they came into the season as All-Ireland champions.<\/p>\n
For Michael Breen, as a three-time All-Ireland winner, he has been through this process before.<\/p>\n
The Premier County finished third in Division 1A, after wins over Waterford, Offaly and Galway, defeats to Cork and Limerick, and a draw with the Cats last weekend.<\/p>\n
While Breen would like to be preparing for a league final, the next focus will be on the Munster championship, as he was happy with Tipperary’s season so far.<\/p>\n
“I think it was a worthwhile exercise because we managed to bank a lot of work throughout the league.<\/p>\n
“Maybe we had to do that coming back a little bit later this year with the holiday and all the formalities that went on after the All-Ireland.<\/p>\n
“We’re still looking to get a lot of work done.<\/p>\n
“We have another three or four weeks to bank work and prepare for Cork on the 19th.<\/p>\n
“You’re coming in from a different angle, but I suppose you can’t compare everything to last year.<\/p>\n
“You can’t say, ‘oh, we did this, we have to do this exactly the same way’.<\/p>\n
“We just have to look for continued improvement again and go year on year and add to what we were good at last year.<\/p>\n
“I suppose we still have to bring forward all those positives and just try to sharpen the sword a small bit more.”<\/p>\n
All eyes will be on the Munster championship soon, as Tipperary get their championship underway against Cork, in a repeat of last season’s All-Ireland final.<\/p>\n
After trailing at half-time, Tipperary were too much for Cork in the second half, as they ran out convincing winners.<\/p>\n
With Cork now under Ben O’Connor, Breen is expecting a different challenge from their success in Croke Park last July.<\/p>\n
“We’ve had some great battles with them, and they’ve probably got the rub of the green more than we have on a couple of those occasions in the last year or so.<\/p>\n
“Looking forward, it’s going to be different.<\/p>\n
“I suppose you can look at it in a number of ways.<\/p>\n
“It’ll be a different physical battle, tactical battle. There’s always going to be things that are tried, and whether they come off or not, we’ll see.<\/p>\n
“Once we get our set of things in order, we’ll be happy enough.”<\/p>\n
For Tipperary, the year after winning an All-Ireland has always been a challenge, having not retained Liam MacCarthy since the 1960s.<\/p>\n
The 2016 and 2019 wins were followed by close defeats to Galway and Limerick in the following seasons.<\/p>\n
Limerick have shown in most recent times the quality needed to win consecutive All-Irelands, as Breen is determined to end their wait for a Munster title.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know, it’s one of the hardest things to do is back up an All-Ireland title.<\/p>\n
“Most recently, Limerick were able to do it four times in a row, which is absolutely unbelievable. But there’s so much quality out there in this Championship.<\/p>\n
“You look at Munster alone, we haven’t won a Munster Championship since 2016.<\/p>\n
“So, number one, let’s try to get out of Munster. Get a win in the first round and go from there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the action in the Allianz National Hurling League got underway in January, Tipperary were the team to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-369775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369775","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=369775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}