Michael Ryan is looking forward to taking over as Tipperary senior hurling manager in 2016.

In an unprecedented move, Tipperary County Board has already announced that selector Ryan will succeed the incumbent Eamon O'Shea at the Premier helm for the season after next:

"I won't say to you that it was always something I wanted to do, because it wasn't," Ryan told The Irish Times. "But it has become that for me, without a doubt. Everything goes back to when we started with Liam [Sheedy] and if you'd asked me in those days, I would have said the idea of managing Tipp just held nothing for me.

"I was just delighted to be involved and to try to help. But it has evolved and I've just been there so long now that it's the natural next step. From that perspective, I'm very excited about it. But look, being honest, I'm parking it. It's not for now. For now, our job is to concentrate on 2015 and we've made some changes for that.

"Eamon had said it to me before, asked would I do it after him. And I said, no. It just wasn't on the cards for me. Most of all, I would have been very conscious of going, 'Look, this is Eamon's gig. I don't want to detract from anything here, let's stay on course for what we're trying to achieve.'

"But in fairness, the County Board were the ones who pushed us on it. This was a County Board initiative. I will admit to you that, yes, I wanted a shot at it. But I was absolutely willing to be one of the five or six names who got thrown into the hat when Eamon eventually created a vacancy. I wasn't trying to have it pre-ordained.

"But the County Board's feeling on it was that they didn't want to arrive at a situation whereby Eamon would come to the end and there would be no continuity at all. They wanted continuity. And I'll be honest, by the time it was put to me, I had come around to it."

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