After last Sunday's loss to Galway I still believe that to be true. Tipperary lost a game they should have won and after the performance we saw from Kilkenny I would have given Tipp a good chance against them in the semi-"nal Babs Keating, Sunday Times, 7 August 2005

HE can't be feeling the same now. The same team, now his team, have lost to Galway again, this time by eight points. They got their crack at Kilkenny in a semifinal and were hammered by 12. Babs Keating has lost more than games of hurling this year though. While they won't admit it until he's gone at the end of this year or next, he's lost the trust of his players.

How could he retain it after Galway? First he declared that they "were dead only to wash them" and that "they f***in' show no lack of confidence when they're looking for this, that and the other thing"; then, the following week in Portlaoise, he denied ever saying those things and accused journalists of "trying to put a rift between me and the players". The players couldn't fail but see what he was trying to do: rubbish the players to win some sympathy from the public, then rubbish the media to try to hold onto the dressing room. In doing so, Keating was effectively saying what another once great but now hapless coach, Larry Brown, astonishingly proclaimed in New York about the continuing decline of another great sporting dynasty, the Knicks, a few days later: "It's not on me."

Possibly the most revealing post-match comment of Keating's was one he made in an interview with RTE Radio in Portlaoise when he claimed that all he had been trying to do was get this generation of players to play with the same drive as the Michael Clearys and John Leahys did in the '80s and '90s. Though the tone was softer, the message and theme was remarkably similar to the previous fortnight's more bombastic assertion that, "I came from a hard school playing hurling in Tipperaryf and that's a school these lads don't understand." In his newspaper column last week, Ger Loughnane rightly noted not just that Keating looked "dispirited" but that "all the tales of Tipp's former glories should be reserved for reunions with his old cronies". While Keating has previously prided himself on his association with Mick O'Dwyer and the role he played in Brian Lacey declaring for Kildare, he could have absorbed a lesson O'Dwyer did upon his second coming to that county. In his first stint there, the Kildare players would roll their eyes and drum their fingers when O'Dwyer would refer to his time in charge of Kerry; in his second, Kerry was rarely mentioned. Old stories of Jacko and Nicky might charm some kids in Laois and UCD for a while but the effect wears thin.

Keating pointed out this past week that the difference between the team he inherited this time compared to the one he took over 20 years ago was that this side had seven All Ireland winners, yet why then is every reference point to the distant past? Tecumseh once said, "I am a Shawnee. My forefathers were warriors. Their son is a warrior. From my tribe I take nothing. I am the maker of my own fortune."

Brendan Cummins and the Kellys could say the same about being Tipp hurlers. Yet as the Galway and Laois postmatch interviews underlined, all Keating keeps throwing in the face of his Celtic Tiger hurlers isn't how they made their own fortune but the memory of their forefathers.

They aren't the only words of his that could come back to haunt him. . .

? ? ? When I wrote about Tipperary's future after the defeat to Cork last year in the quali"ers, I suggested Ken Hogan and his selectors should begin putting together their team for 2005 well before Christmas and hit the National League with a settled line-up. I saw no evidence of that in the game against Limerick Babs Keating, 22 May 2005 Ideally, you should have your championship team in mind from the middle of March. That didn't happen in Tipp this year.

Babs Keating, 16 October 2005 There are question marks hanging over all of them.

Even the country's number one number one. Since his Player of February heroics against Kilkenny, Brendan Cummins hasn't kept another clean sheet; in fact no other goalkeeper from a topnine county conceded as many goals in this year's league.

Listed to start on his right today is Declan Fanning though not even Fanning can be sure of that; he's played in four different lines of the field this year, including the unfamiliar territories of centreforward and full-forward. If he does start in the corner, it'll be the first time in five games. If he doesn't, then he might be at centre-back, the same spot where he only lasted 22 minutes against Kilkenny three weeks ago.

He may also play on the wing, possibly his best position of all, with Hugh Moloney going to the corner, yet it's the one place Fanning hasn't played this year. If one player personifies this Tipp selection it is Fanning, with one word summing up both his condition and theirs . . . unsettled.

The number of goals Tipp have been leaking suggest Philly Maher and his legs have never been the same since the 2003 league final.

Eamon Corcoran likewise is a shadow of the player he was in the spring of '03, let alone '01, while the other members of the half-back line, Conor O'Mahony and Maloney, have never started in a Munster championship game before.

Another debutant is Shane McGrath, a tidy hurler with a good eye for a score but management obviously have their doubts about him. While he featured in all seven league games, he only played the full 70 minutes in two of them; the rest of the time he was either whipped off or came on as a sub in the closing minutes. His midfield partner, Colin Morrissey, is hardly the most dependable either.

Though he started in six of Tipp's seven league games, he only scored in one of them, a poor return for a midfielder and a dismal one for someone who started four of those games in the forwards.

The half-forward line has hardly been prolific. John O'Brien gets his first start in a Munster championship game since Tipp met today's opponents in 2002, but he can count himself fortunate;

while he saw action in all seven league games and started in four, his tally for the entire campaign was a paltry four points. Ger 'Redser' O'Grady, in six games, including five starts, has registered just 1-2. All John Carroll, in six games, including four as a starter, has managed to score is the 1-1 he got against Laois.

Inside, Diarmuid Fitzgerald will play corner-forward today on the back of a few games up front with UCD and his first 35 minutes at inter-county there three weeks ago when he set up a goal for Eoin Kelly in garbage time against Kilkenny.

The same Fitzgerald, by Keating's own admission, was Man of the Match from wing-back when today's two opponents met in last year's championship. Michael Webster scored at least a goal in two of his five starts this spring but was taken off before half-time in two others. When Keating remarked in his post-Galway outburst that Tipp "would be depending on God now", Tipp fans could have interpreted that as a nod to Eoin Kelly's imminent return. Now Kelly has returned. Yet the question remains: should Babs have returned?

Should he have even been asked to? But then this is the Tipperary county board we're talking about. The same board who ruined the continuity of the English era with the appointment of Michael Doyle, the same board who now have Fr Tom Fogarty and Len Gaynor, two senior managers from the '90s over the county under21s and intermediates; whatever about that pair's capacity to develop future senior players, the board aren't grooming future senior coaches there. It's like Tipp hurling is still fixated with the '60s.

For that, they might have landed themselves with the '70s instead.