While the rest of Ireland rejoiced in both the improbability of Tipp's championship run and the retro exuberance of their football, Galway supporters remain baffled by the bizarre no-show of their supposedly promising team.
Their midfield held the whip hand in all three matches in the Connacht championship. On Sunday, Galway were minced in the middle third. They were destroyed on their kick-out.
Their much praised defensive structure crumbled in the second half. Tipp attackers sauntered through the gaps in the Galway defence with shocking regularity.
Gary Sice, who tore it up in the Connacht final replay, suffered an especially violent off-day. He failed to register a score.
Speaking to the Irish Examiner today, Sice said that Tipperary seemed to know an awful lot about Galway. In fact, they far more than they should have known.
They seemed to know an awful lot about us.
Even by the talk on the field, they seemed to know an awful lot about us and maybe too much.
They knew more than they should have known, I think. They seemed to know a lot.
It was assumed by less conspiratorial minds than ours that Sice was merely complimenting Tipperary on the extent of their homework.
However, the manner of his phraseology ("more than they should have known") led us to think of Bill Belichick and the New York Jets.
We rang up Tipperary PRO Joe Bracken. We asked him straight out - 'were you spying on Galway?'
He hadn't seen the comments and didn't know what we were talking about.
Then we rang up Secretary Tim Floyd. He laughed and said that Tipp don't get up to anything like that. He paid tribute to the exhaustive analysis done by their selector Tommy Toomey and Brian Lacey, who played for both Tipp and Kildare.
We have very good forensic analysts. We've a retired guy there in Tommy Twomey who does a lot of our analysis. We also have Brian Lacey, a Tipperary man who played for Kildare (1998 All-Ireland semi-finalist) who works on our analysis. It's all hard work.
