Galway's late collapse against Tipperary in last year's All-Ireland hurling qualifier still rankles with Anthony Cunningham.

The Tribesmen were outscored by 2-10 to 0-1 in the final 19 minutes of the Semple Stadium encounter, and Cunningham knows a similar lapse in concentration will prove fatal when the sides renew their rivalry on Sunday.

"We had the winning of that match, but switched off in the last 10 or 15 minutes. We had put ourselves in a super position," the Galway manager said in the Irish Examiner.

"Some of it is down to newness and freshness and lack of experience. And some is just switching off. So there is hurling, there is ability and then there is also being connected in the game when you have to be connected for the full 70 minutes. If you don't, Tipperary will punish you."

The St. Thomas' clubman also feels that some of the criticism the Westerners' received in the wake of last April's Allianz League quarter-final defeat to a fast-improving Waterford was unwarranted.

"I thought [the criticism] was overboard a bit, to be honest," he recalled.

"I thought we had quite a good league until that match. Even in parts of that match, I know we were down at half-time but we got it back to four points. It was probably the fact that it was against Waterford and Waterford have proven since they are a very, very good team.

"Others had looked at them as a Division 1B team coming up and how could you get beaten down there. In hindsight, it was very good because it gives you a bit of a jolt and there was a lot of questions asked of the players to really explain what happened.

"But all of the teams, I think everybody had a bad day in one of the matches in the league and ours happened to be the worst day. Even the matches that we lost in the league against Tipp, we had a very good performance. There were good performances right through the league, but I just thought the Waterford match was over-played."

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