Firstly, we might not have concentrated on the negatives enough. Against Clare in the league they were beating us by seven or eight points at one stage before we came back and we didn't highlight that.

The other problem may have been complacency going into the Munster championship. I suppose it would have been better if we'd gone out in the league semi-finals. We didn't have enough time to prepare for the championship and having played well against Kilkenny, I think that may have caused that complacency amongst the players. But you also need four or five weeks to prepare for a game like Tipperary and in that time you can work on everything including getting rid of that complacency. But we only had two weeks. At the time, however, none of us realised that.

It's so easy to look back, but we weren't disappointed after losing to Kilkenny. We were delighted with the performance. But we still haven't produced when it mattered most. We peaked too early.

Going into the championship, our aspirations were to win a match. We haven't done so in six years now, so just to beat Tipperary, that was the main aim. We were good in the league and Tipperary wouldn't have had as good a run in the league as we did. We would have put in better performances. I thought we were confident, but whether the players believed it or not is another question.

Maybe they didn't. The lads were dead against Tipp, and the spark that we had shown in the league wasn't there.

Something creeped in and we never performed. Our halfforward line and our midfielders just didn't do it and they never closed down Tipperary. People were mentioning Damien Reale. Eoin Kelly had said in the past the two guys he least liked being marked by were Damien and Ollie Canning. But I don't believe that was a solution, that was proven last Sunday in Ennis. Damien again had problems with the guys he was marking. He hadn't performed to his ability all year and we were aware of that. He was under pressure last Sunday against lesser players than Eoin Kelly, so I don't think that was a solution.

Once we crashed out, it was very hard to pick ourselves up for the qualifiers and our performance last week showed that. It was five very difficult weeks for the selectors, coaches and players as well. They were with their clubs for a week and a half and when they came back to us they were just very very flat. So there were a lot of changes made for the Clare game but that wasn't panicking. All those changes had been discussed amongst us all and we had tried them out in challenge matches. Nobody came along and said, 'Hey, why am I playing here?' They were all delighted with the changes. In hindsight it may have been a major contributing factor for our performance but a lot of that was surely mental tiredness as well. It had all taken its toll.

And on the sideline in Ennis we got a real fright. Having spent so much time with the group of players all year, this attitude was something we hadn't seen before. All of their heads hadn't gone down together like that before and it was a real shock.

So I walked away. I had thought long about it. The problem was they weren't playing the way I wanted them to. It was no fault of theirs, they are so used to playing a particular style but because of that anything we did on the training ground didn't go out onto the pitch. When the pressure came on they went back to doing what they know best and that really frustrated me.

It's just a different style of hurling I don't believe in.

It doesn't bode well for this season but they haven't become a bad team overnight.

Their confidence is low and the new people in charge need to sort that out. As for me?

I'm working with Thurles Sarsfields like I did last year.

I'm going to continue with the clubs, it's probably a bit too early to go to the inter-county scene. A lack of experience may have shown but I enjoy working with clubs. There's less pressure.