by Jackie Cahill

Former Laois star Peter O'Leary has insisted that Tipperary manager Liam Kearns is the best inter-county boss he's worked under.

Kearns plotted a first Munster SFC victory for Tipperary over Cork since 1944 last Sunday and managed Laois for the 2007 and 2008 campaigns.

During a lengthy career with Laois, O'Leary also worked under the likes of Mick O'Dwyer, Sean Dempsey, Justin McNulty and latterly Tomás Ó Flatharta, before the O'Dempsey's clubman retired in 2014.

But O'Leary insisted that Kearns was, "by a good long way", the pick of the bunch.

The 31-year-old said: "I just think he's a very clever manager. He puts a lot of thought into what he does.

"When he was with us, he seemed to keep everybody happy and talked to all of the players, making everybody believe they were part of the set-up.

"When we played Dublin in the 2007 Leinster final, he came up with a game-plan on how we were going to negate the Dublin kick-outs and we played a man back.

"I think we were a couple of points up coming near the end of the first half but we fell asleep and didn't notice that Dublin had pushed a man up on our sweeper and we were caught for two goals.

"But Liam didn't take crap off anybody, he was his own man.

"He was probably ahead of what we were used to prior to that, giving us our first sense of tactics.

"We had come from the Micko era to all of a sudden having tactical plans and it was a big change to the psyche of lads, as opposed to just heavy training and playing football in training.

"He set us up for (Justin) McNulty coming in with a defensive game-plan and lads understood the tactical side of things.

"I'd say Liam was the right manager at the wrong time in our evolution. If somebody had come in two years after him with his head, we'd have done a lot better."

And O'Leary believes that Laois can bounce back from the Dublin defeat to send Armagh crashing out of the championship at the weekend.

He added: "You could say that Armagh was the hardest draw but they're in disarray as well.

"Their heads are down all year and while Laois went to Armagh and beat them, that was one of the poorer Laois games in the League.

"John O'Loughlin missing (through suspension) around the middle deprives us of a real driving force but Kevin Meaney looked very good when he came on against Dublin and he was very disappointed that he wasn't starting."

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