O'Donovan has long advocated that a player attempting to divest himself of possession be allowed to drop the hurley once he handpasses the sliotar with his other hand. O'Donovan was sitting in the New Stand in Semple Stadium last night week and had a perfect view of the late incident that saw James O'Brien, chased out towards the wing by Thomas Stapleton, drop his stick and . . . a long-running O'Donovan bugbear . . . employ the same hand to palm the ball back to Kevin Tobin. Tobin despatched it between the uprights at the Town End to cut the gap to six points and ignite Limerick's comeback.

Tipperary were seven points up with six minutes left, six points up with three minutes to go, four points up entering injury time. They didn't concede a goal thereafter. Improbably, they still didn't win. To O'Donovan, a man who hurled for both Tipp and Limerick, no great surprise attended the reversal of fortunes. It was, he contends, entirely par for the course.

Think of the 1996 Munster final when Limerick fought back from 10 points down to draw, he says. Think of the 1992 National League decider when they came from well off the pace to win by a point.

Think of the 1981 Munster semi-final when Tipp led by 13 points at half-time, only for Joe McKenna to score three goals and Limerick to win the replay. It's a historical thing, O'Donovan argues.

"With five minutes to go on any given day, Limerick believe they can catch Tipp.

Against Cork, that belief isn't there. Even though Tipp might have more skillful hurlers, Limerick have this fighting spirit and determination. At the moment they're physically stronger, which helps compensate too."

Tommy Dunne was another man less than astonished by the endgame that unfolded last weekend. Tipperary he deems to be a team "short on confidence"; it's an observation rather than a criticism, for Dunne uses the same phrase to describe the post-2001 Tipp he hurled with.

"We were a very brittle bunch then and I'm not sure if we've emerged from that category. In fact, we've done nothing to emerge from it.

That killer instinct isn't there.

To be fair, though, there has been a bit of an improvement.

To score 1-19 in the last two games was good going. That's a score that would win nearly any championship match.

And you have to give Limerick credit as well."

Where did the rot set in?

Certainly not with James Woodlock's decision to take his point, Tipp's last, in the 62nd minute. With Seamus Hickey zeroing in from the right and Brian Murray standing guard in front of him, Woodlock correctly eschewed the temptation to do the hero on it. His point left Tipp 1-19 to 1-12 ahead and Limerick requiring snookers.

Thing was, Tipp then went and cued up the ball for them.

Darragh Egan dropping the sliotar when clean through on goal, Eoin Kelly's pass intercepted by Brian Geary, Eamon Buckley being hooked by Donie Ryan to allow Ollie Moran fire the fourth point of his salvo. Good teams hurl their way out of pressure situations. Tipp fumbled their way into one.

Those who harp on about the hoary old "no centre-back since Mick Roche" chestnut are losing sight of a bigger picture. The development of a couple of really good specialist corner-backs, once a county birthright, is a more pressing need for Tipp. It has been for quite a while. The irony is that over the past 10 years Tipperary have produced a substantially larger quantity of gifted ballplaying forwards than Cork, even if Liam Cahill, Bonny Kennedy, the O'Briens, Eugene O'Neill et al incarnated a line that ultimately stretched out to the crack of irrelevance.

What they haven't done . . .

and we're not forgetting Paul Ormonde's injury misfortune here . . . is endow the game with a series of corner-backs of the class and stringency of Fergal Ryan, Wayne Sherlock and Brian Murphy, hopping instead from George Frend through Michael Ryan and Paul Shelly to Thomas Costello and, in the 2005 Munster final, Eamon Corcoran. At least Eamon Buckley showed promising signs last weekend of growing into the number two jersey.

Fair is fair. Tipp were short not only their regular fullback but also short, in Paul Kelly, a corner-forward responsible for five of the 13 goals they hit during the league. It's easy to criticise Babs (not least because on occasion he turns himself into a coconut shy with his utterances), to say that he should have more sense at his age than to be getting into public rows with Tom Ryan (indisputable) and to hold that being the right man in the right place 20 years ago is not an automatic recipe for being the right man in the right place now (almost as indisputable).

Yet it's equally easy, and far more convenient, for the manager's detractors to forget that Tipp today enter the fray for the third time in as many weekends without two of their best and most experienced players. As Tommy Dunne points out, moreover, they shot 1-19 in each of the two drawn games, whereas in three of their four outings in last year's championship they . . . goals aside . . . failed to break the 14-point barrier.

In contrast to the Gaelic Grounds six days earlier, Tipperary seized the replay by the throat from the off. Babs had a gameplan that entailed sitting the half-forward line out the field and isolating the full-forward line inside with runners bursting through to help. Assisted by the cleanness and trajectory of the supply being directed into the full-forwards and their willingness to hook and block when they weren't in possession, his big idea worked splendidly. On the night, the home side had four shots at Brian Murray in the first half and managed one goal from them. On another night, they'd have managed three and that would have been that.

Today? Conor O'Donovan thinks Limerick may shade it.

Tommy Dunne reckons there won't be more than the puck of a ball in it but has no idea in whose favour it'll be. One way of thumbnailing matters is to assert that Tipp are clearly the classier team and, conversely, in no way clearly the better team. Were Limerick to get a run on them entering the final quarter, an ecstatic home crowd might do the rest.

But adrenaline only brings you so far. A soupcon of backbone from the visitors at the supreme moment and this will be Tipp's day.

Verdict Tipperary

MUNSTER SHC SEMIFINAL (SECOND REPLAY) LIMERICK v TIPPERARY Gaelic Grounds, 3.30 Referee S McMahon (Clare) Extra-time if necessary Live, RTE One, 3.15 LLIMERICK B Murray; S Lucey, D Reale, S Hickey; M O'Riordan, B Geary, M Foley; M O'Brien, D O'Grady; N Moran, O Moran, M Fitzgerald; A O'Shaughnessy, B Begley, S O'Connor TIPPERARY G Kennedy; E Buckley, D Fanning, D Fitzgerald; E Corcoran, C O'Mahony, H Maloney; S McGrath, J Woodlock; J Carroll, D Egan, B Dunne; S Butler, E Kelly, L Corbett