With Tipperary struggling to keep pace with a rampant Cork in the second round of today's Munster Hurling Championship, Ger Loughnane sounded the death knell for the players who had been such worthy All-Ireland winners in 2016.
Losing to an invigorated young Limerick side last weekend, Michael Ryan shifted his starting XV once again; reintroducing the reliable names after a failed experiment.
Loughnane, speaking on The Sunday Game, was left thinking that the jig is well and truly up for this Tipperary team:
The game is over completely.
You've one team with pace, skill and movement ... and then you have another team, Tipperary, who unfortunately, have come to the end of the line.
With Ryan's side trailing Cork by nine points at the half-way mark, if not for a number of wides from John Meyler's men, it could have been further still.
Citing that it "wasn't a lack of character" that had been Tipperary's undoing, Loughnane simply put it down to "a lack of energy":
That's what happens to a team when they get old, they lose that energy.
Suggesting that a dearth of young talent coming through had hampered Tipperary's progression this year, Loughnane surmised that there is "no way back for this Tipperary team now - either today, or in the Championship."
