Former Tipperary star Tommy Dunne says he was "surprised" by manager Michael Ryan's too-many-fixtures remarks following the Premier County's defeat to Cork.

The All-Ireland champions were edged out by the Rebels in a Thurles thriller over the weekend, having been completely dismantled by Galway in their previous outing - the national league final. After the game, Ryan pointed out that some of his players had played eight county matches plus club games in ten weeks, but 2001 All-Ireland winning captain Dunne isn't sure how this could have been the reason for their Munster exit:

"I'll be honest with you, I was surprised when I heard it," Dunne told Newstalk last night. "What he points out there is possibly significant but I mean, the fixtures were made a long time ago, so they would have known potentially what the plan was coming up along.

"I don't know does it stand up but again I'm not in there so I don't know what the boys were seeing. It's a possibility for sure because the Galway game, Tipp were well off the pace and Galway annihilated them and I suppose we looked at it and said 'maybe it's a once off, these things can happen' because it had been a long time since Tipp had a performance as poor as the league final.

"Then lo and behold, we come and play Cork yesterday and while we were competitive on the scoreboard, I looked at the match closely last night over an hour or two and I thought we were well off the pace."

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