
5 September 2010; Tribal rite. Tipperary players celebrate around the Liam MacCarthy Cup following its safe arrival back into their dressingroom. Picture credit: Ray McManus / SPORTSFILE
On this All-Ireland Hurling Final week, we are taking a look back at some of the personal favourite pictures of our photographers from finals past. Now it’s the turn of Ray McManus.
One of my favourite photos from an All-Ireland Hurling Final came in 2010 when Tipperary beat Kilkenny to end their ‘drive for five’ All-Ireland titles in a row.
Kilkenny were the dominating force in hurling since ’00’s, contesting all but two finals and winning seven of them.
In 2009 Tipperary were denied their first All-Ireland since ’01 when two late goals sealed the win for the Cats so this year they were very determined under manager Liam Sheedy.
Tipperary had a great 2010 final, in what was a very intense, hard-hitting and very skilful game with Lar Corbett becoming the hero, scoring a hat-trick in an All-Ireland hurling final is something special.
Tipperary were leading by eight points when the final whistle went and the substitutes and backroom team raced from the sideline like Olympic sprinters to greet their team-mates in scenes of great emotion and the noise was deafening.
I was following the celebrations of the Tipp team and their great captain Eoin Kelly and ended up in the dressing room among the madness of the celebrations.
The chairman led the celebrations by standing on the table singing ‘Slievenamon’! and the photograph itself shows the Liam MacCarthy cup taking pride of place inside the inner sanctum of the Tipperary dressing room and captain Eoin Kelly, right, and team-mates enjoying making history.
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