Rushe is loving life on move

AT just 21 years of age, Dublin’s Liam Rushe has reinvented himself more times than Madonna.

Since making his championship debut against Antrim in 2009, he has played in a eight positions. More often than not, he has not played where he has been named. That’s been a trait under Anthony Daly, where versatility is key.

Against Limerick he was due to play at centre-back where he had played a few times already this year. That was before Conal Keaney’s motorbike accident. It meant Rushe, who had been listed at midfield, was pushed to left half-forward.

“It wasn’t too bad,” he shrugged. “I thought I was finally going to make my debut centre-back but I’ll wait for another day. It’s tricky enough. I’ve been doing it all year, starting midfield and going centre-back, starting in the forwards and going back midfield, so it wasn’t too bad.

“It was a bit of a difference, I hadn’t played forward in a while, it was midfield/centre-back or wing-back or whatever. It was a bit of a change to get my head around it. Maybe I wasn’t as sharp as I should have been in the forwards. I should have picked off two or three more points.”

Sharp or not, he is Daly’s contender for Young Hurler of the Year and thrives on being where the action is.

“I always drop the old cliché, ‘I’ll play where I’m put’, but to be honest I don’t really have a preference.”

Rushe is the type of confident young hurler who can’t wait to play his first All-Ireland SHC semi-final against Tipperary. He has the U21 equivalent to look forward to as well but should Dublin have been made the breakthrough earlier than this season?

“This year we took every game as it comes and gave it everything,” he said. “Maybe we haven’t hurled as well as we did in bits of the league.

“There’s a bit of paradox to that, with summer hurling we should be better but we dug out wins when maybe we shouldn’t have.

“That Offaly game, it was set up for a fall. We could have folded so easily that day and we managed to dig it out.”