Eimear Ryan: Perhaps there’s no greater story of sporting resilience than that of Thérèse Maher

Liberty Insurance Senior Camogie Championship 15/9/2013 /Galway /Therese Maher at the final whistle /Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan

Last month, a number of Dublin footballers claimed their eighth All-Ireland medal, joining the top tier of all-time football medal-winners — a Dublin-Kerry axis that includes such household name as Cluxton, Spillane, and Páidí Ó Sé.

This stat is maybe most impressive in the case of James McCarthy, who has started in all eight of his All-Ireland final wins since 2011. For an outfield player, that’s some going.

The hurling side of the medals league tables is similarly populated with greats.

Your Henrys, JJs and Eddies, and — harking back to the glorious black and white days — your John Doyles and Christy Rings. And then there’s Rena, whose dual star status and consistent brilliance puts her way ahead of the pack with 18. (You’d have to wonder if Rena ever wears all 18 All-Ireland medals around her neck at the same time? I would, I think, if I were her — if I didn’t crumple under the weight of glory first.)

We love stats, in sports — it’s how we measure and quantify success, after all. We latch on to those big numbers and the shiny medals they represent. But what about those stars who never won an All-Ireland?

The list would make you weep. Brick Walsh, Ken McGrath, John Mullane, Paul Flynn.

Ollie Canning and Damien Hayes. Ciarán Carey and Mark Foley. Diarmuid Lyng. Anthony Nash. Pat Horgan, although there’s hope for him yet. Declan Browne. David Brady, and all his fellow countymen besides.

It’s a particular quirk of the GAA, being tied to county boundaries, that so many of the best can go their whole careers without earning the game’s highest honour. In most sports, if you are an outrageous talent you will be snapped up by a successful team at some stage in your career. Not the case with the GAA.

Just as there are outstanding players with no All-Ireland titles, there are average players with All-Ireland medals in their back pockets.

You can be in the right place at the right time, and be swept along in the winning streak of a powerful panel.

I am one of those, picking up an All-Ireland camogie medal as a substitute in 2004, my first year up senior and the last time that Tipperary were champions. I think often of the stars in Tipp camogie since — the Cáit Devanes and the Mary Ryans — who are far more deserving of that accolade.

And then there’s the ratio: When your All-Ireland medals are vastly outnumbered by your All-Ireland defeats. Kilkenny’s Anne Dalton, one of the game’s all-time greats, announced her retirement recently with two All-Ireland medals to her name, which is no mean haul.

When you consider, though, that she lost six finals — including three in a row from 2017-19 — it’s remarkable that she had the fortitude to come back and secure her second title in 2020.

A brilliant note on which to bow out.

Perhaps there’s no greater story of sporting resilience, though, than that of Galway’s Thérèse Maher. It was a joy to watch her get the Laochra Gael treatment the week gone by.

A relatable figure, she recounted the familiar hallmarks of a GAA upbringing: The family lore about the time you got tossed in the air by an excitable dad on the terrace; tearing out the back for pucks after watching your heroes on The Sunday Game; learning the hard lesson that the closer you are to the tackle, the safer you’ll be.

Her career is an embodiment of the progress that has been made by camogie in recent decades.

She began her career on a truncated pitch with 12 players a side, and finished it in the modern era.

She was drafted onto the Galway senior panel as a scrappy 15-year-old, something which is not allowed now, even at club level.

She was minor captain at the time; this was when minor in camogie meant U16, not U18.

She got her first start in an All-Ireland final in 1998, which was also the first year ever that the camogie final was broadcast live.

She struck three long-range points from midfield that day, and though Galway ultimately lost to Cork, for 17-year-old Maher the future must have seemed bright. But she wouldn’t make it back to Croke Park for another 10 years.

There were more heartbreaking final defeats to come: 2008, again to Cork, by five; 2010, to Wexford, by two; 2011, a carbon copy of the previous year.

As she described on Laochra Gael, that twice-in-a-row defeat to Wexford was the hardest to take; she was 30 years old and had played in five All-Ireland finals without success.

There’s always next year until there isn’t. But as her mother had told her shortly before her death in 2008: ‘Something tells me you won’t stop until you win one.’

Even before the 2013 final, she decided it would be her last game for Galway.

She finished up her inter-county career as an All-Ireland champion and player of the year, having more or less given half her life to Galway camogie. The iconic image of her falling to her knees at the final whistle, a consternation of emotion on her face, sums up what that All-Ireland medal meant to her.

Alone it stands. And that’s okay — more than okay.

Glorious, even.

She’s still playing. “The term ‘one life, one club’ definitely doesn’t apply to me,” Maher admits at the end of the episode, and it’s true — at club level, you can be in control of your fortunes a bit more than at county.

Having played for Loughrea Shamrocks in her youth, she transferred to Athenry in 2003 when Shamrocks went down to Senior B.

“I wanted to keep playing senior camogie.”

She has been playing with Athenry for 17 years now, winning four county titles along the way.

“My sister Imelda played until the age of 46,” she added, indicating that her club retirement is still some way off.

Long live the queen.