Walsh targets three-year dual role
Starting with the Cork hurlers’ drawn Munster quarter-final against Waterford on May 25 he’s played with the hurlers on four occasions, the footballers twice as well as Kanturk’s intermediate hurlers.
And should Brian Cuthbert’s side beat Sligo on Saturday week, he faces two football games in seven days with the hurlers’ All-Ireland semi-final then taking place on August 17.
Manic times but he’s experienced them before, playing as many as five occasions in one week as a minor. He’s with the footballers exclusively until the qualifier with Sligo but acknowledges it will get complicated from here on in as it’s knockout championship.
“I’m not out every night because that would be stupid,” he said at the launch of Supermacs’ Fresh Healthy Menu SuperSubs.
“You would only be getting injured and all that. It’s probably what Iexpected, really, but I don’t know what it’s going to be like for the next few weeks. That’s when it’s going to get tricky, really.”
Nothing as yet has convinced Walsh that he can’t perform to an optimum level in both codes. He will have to pick one over the other one day but not for the foreseeable future.
“I know going into this year that the reason I said I would do it [is] I’m only 24 so if I continue to do it, it would be for another year or maybe two or three. We’ll see how it goes. The opportunity came about and I said if I didn’t do it I would regret it and like that I know I would have had to choose eventually.”
He continued: “I’ve said it before, people kept coming up to me saying, ‘no, you cannot do it, it’s not possible’. I suppose after the Tipperary game people were saying, ‘Jesus it is possible’, and after the Kerry game ‘It’s not possible’. So you’re always going to have you’re begrudgers and your doubters no matter what you are at and I just have to drive on to the next game now.”
Walsh, along with fellow dual players Eoin Cadogan and Damien Cahalane came in for more criticism than most after the heavy loss to Kerry in the Munster decider. Sligo is a chance to make some things right but at least the trio had the hurling final to change tact.
“I suppose if it’s true what they say, that you’re only as good as your last game we’re really screwed after that one [v Kerry] because things didn’t go our way and it’s very easy to throw the blame on someone. Like that, a few of us got a bit of a doing but you just take it on the chin and move on.
“I was lucky enough that I could go to hurling training on the Tuesday night and I was able to focus on something different.”
Speaking on the radio straight after the win, Walsh, despite a massive Munster campaign, sounded like he had ridden on the coattails of the rest of the players.
Having come into the panel this year, those feelings haven’t changed. “The contrast between the football final the week before and last Sunday was just incredible. It was just packed to the rafters last weekend and you could really tell that hurling in Cork was back and was (more) popular than the football.
“It is always a great occasion like that and I suppose the lads (hurlers) have been knocking at the door now for the last few years and it was really building up. It was something the lads were hungry for and I suppose it was great to be involved and to play my small bit in it.”
Playing both was never a runner when Conor Counihan was over the footballers but his successor was more accommodating.
“The first person I went to when I first said I would do it was Brian Cuthbert. I suppose it’s been in my head now for the last years, but Conor wasn’t for it. That’s just the way I was, I respected Conor’s decision, like any manager they always wanted everyone to be 100%.
“In all fairness to Brian, he’s a Cork GAA man so he respected my decision, he knew it was something I had been thinking about. I was fortunate he gave me the opportunity with it.”
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