For Tipperary folk, there was something too.

Two years ago with Philly Maher in irreversible decline, they had no full back, but in Paul Curran and then Declan Fanning, Keating not only found and moulded a full back but each year the best full back of the championship. Eamonn Corcoran's career was revived. A string of youngsters were blooded.

In 11 championship games under Keating, Tipp were never beaten by more than three points. They were always competitive, if not quite as competitive as they should have been.

Unfortunately, here we are at the end, just like the start, with him hiding behind the players. All along his message has been that which that other once great coach, Larry Brown, declared about his disastrous stint with the New York Knicks: "It's not on me."

Fundamentally, the problem was this. If you do not respect the modern player then he will not respect you. If you cannot relate to him, then how can he relate to you, play for you, win for you?

From the outset he made some costly mistakes. His selector John Leahy might have been one of the players of his generation and coached Mullinahone to a county title but he brought too much baggage to this gig; his onfield verbal taunting of this year's captain, Benny Dunne, while he was playing and coaching Mullinahone meant relations with the Toomevara contingent was strained from the beginning.

Leahy also suffered from the same disposition as his mentor . . . and Tipp hurling in general . . . of always looking at what's wrong with a player rather than what's right with him.

Two weeks ago in training when a crossfield ball by Eoin Kelly was the subject of a side-ofthe-mouth remark from Leahy, he was publicly confronted by Kelly's brother, Paul. The motivational climate was not that of a championship team.

Much of it stemmed from training. Brian Murray put in sterling work but the collective sessions generally lacked sufficient co-ordination between himself and Leahy and Keating. The Brendan Cummins stand-off had its roots in Cummins' insistence to carry on his own specialised training during regular team sessions, just as Donal Og Cusack does in Cork, and while Leahy resented that, this year several outfield players went back to their clubs on non-county nights, feeling their hurling sessions would be more intense than those being conducted in Thurles.

Cummins was rightly challenged about his puckouts after the first Limerick game but when Tipp lost so many of their puckouts in the third game and Gerry Kennedy choked up a soft goal against Offaly, it should have been clear to anyone wanting to challenge for the All Ireland that Cummins had served his time in the cooler.

Keating would question Eoin Kelly's fitness and by extension, his commitment, but the best way of extracting and honing a commitment from a player is by communicating with him, listening to him, empathising with him.

Instead that communication was one way and all year, as everyone in the set up knows, Kelly looked like a player burned out and worn down by the demands of a county and a never-satisfied management.

Keating might claim that he did his best to modernise, consulting Mickey Harte upon his appointment and bringing in sports psychologists like DCU's Siobhan McArdle and former Kerry advisor Declan Coyle but Harte's philosophy was never embraced and McArdle and Coyle's involvement, too compartmentalised and sporadic.

It's hard to envisage, for instance, Harte telling a rookie that he was a liability yet that's what Ryan O'Dwyer, arguably Tipp's best player in this year's league, was told days after his championship debut in the Gaelic Grounds this summer. It's hard to think of Harte allowing one of the team's starters to sit on the floor of the team bus on the way to that championship match, yet that's the plight Darragh Egan was subjected to prior to scoring three points that day, such was the number of family members and teammates from the '60s Keating had invited on board. Instead of being ridiculed, there was actually something honourable and dignified about the quiet, manful way the Tipperary . . . and Clare . . .

hurlers conducted themselves this year amidst the circus that was their management.

But as the man himself says, Dubai now calls, and with that, his county will call on Nicky English and Liam Sheedy, last year's All Ireland winning minor coach. Babs' second coming might be held up as further proof of the old adage that you should never go back but that adage is too lazy and simplistic. English must be distraught at the way the team he built was mishandled this past five years. To go back to a point we made a few weeks ago;

that team won a championship, but it did not go on and become a championship team. English is smart enough to realise that all the elements are there in Tipperary to mould another championship team.

For all Keating's rants and complaints about the lack of depth at his disposal, Tipp have the best conveyer belt in Munster; the one grade the county board have been making the right managerial appointments in is at minor where this year Tommy Dunne and Declan Ryan have matched the standard set by Sheedy. Many will advise English to stay away from it and for Sheedy to pass on it too and take over the county under-21s but English could adapt to any situation while Sheedy should be mindful the under-21 grade might be abolished by the time his minor class of 2006 are at their peak. Together they would form a formidable management partnership before passing their team on in three or four years' time to the safe and capable hands of a Dunne and Ryan.

Tipp aren't the only county to botch up succession. So are Galway.

Just look where both counties were in 2001, in the All Ireland final. Or even in 2002, with Tipp pushing Kilkenny to the brink and Galway hammering Cork in Thurles. But instead the Galway county board decided to hone in on their onepoint defeat to Clare. They didn't appreciate Noel Lane was preparing a championship team the right way; all they saw was the cost spent on a team that had failed to deliver an All Ireland.

The fallout has been much more costly. If Lane had been retained in Galway for 2003, if Ken Hogan had also been handed the Tipp job that year instead of in 2005, both sides would probably have gone on to routinely play in and challenge for All Irelands.

Some of this Galway team might still get their All Ireland under Ger Loughnane but for most of them their best chance went with Lane. Loughnane was slow to absorb a lot of lessons this year but by now he must know that either Eugene Cloonan, Kevin Broderick and David Tierney's day has come and gone and/or that subjecting players of that age profile to the rigours of a racetrack in November is lunacy. The chances are those players will be discarded, with his 2008 team spined by Ger Mahon (who had a fine game last week up to the moment he thought Eddie Brennan was the guy he was trying to hook instead of the guy 20 yards behind him), John Lee and Joe Canning, but more than that will have to change.

Though Galway stayed with Kilkenny for 60 minutes, the reality is no Munster team this past four years in Croke Park has failed to stay with Kilkenny for that long either. As Liam Kearns said of Laois last week, a team's final game of the season cannot be taken in isolation; the year must be reviewed as a whole.

The days of donkey running on hills and race tracks are gone, and the days of last-minute team selections and Rainieri-like tinkering must be dispensed with too. If Loughnane can modernise and properly communicate with his players instead of the information vacuum that existed between the two this year (Derek Hardiman walks off the panel a couple of weeks ago and then walks back into the starting line-up while a grass-eater like Damien Joyce stays rooted to the bench;

what's that about? ), then this second coming might work out.

But if he does not, then he'll be joining Babs back in the papers and out in the sun.

TODAY
Christy Ring Cup final Kildare v Westmeath, Croke Park, 12.15
All Ireland SHC semi-final Kilkenny v Wexford, 2.00
All Ireland SHC quarter-final Waterford v Cork, Croke Park, 4.00
All Ireland MFC quarter-finals Galway v Carlow, Tullamore, 2.00, Tyrone v Kerry, Tullamore, 3.45 SATURDAY
All Ireland MFC quarter-final Cork v Derry, Croke Park, 11.30;
Nicky Rackard Cup final Roscommon v Armagh, Croke Park, 1.15 TV
All Ireland SFC quarter-final Dublin v Derry, Croke Park, 3.00
TV
SUNDAY 12 AUGUST
All Ireland MFC quarter-final Tipperary v Kilkenny, Croke Park, 12.15
All Ireland SFC quarter-final Kerry v Monaghan, Croke Park, 2.00 TV
All Ireland SHC semi-final Waterford/Cork v Limerick, Croke Park, 4.00
TV INCOMING