‘Time to start looking forward’

Allianz HL Division 1A (R1): Cork V Kilkenny: Tomorrow: One of the biggest American Football fans in the GAA, it’s no surprise to hear Jackie Tyrrell eulogise the sport across the water.

When he refers to the huge playing panels in the NFL, though, maybe the Kilkenny man is thinking of the absentees from the black and amber.

“The lads are gone,” says Tyrrell. “It’s time to put that to bed. They were unbelievable but they’re gone — it’s time to start looking forward and there are opportunities for other lads.

“You could spend half the league talking about who’s going to do this or these lads or that. It’s time for the head space — 2015 is firmly here.

“You only get a few opportunities now, so maybe lads will get one or two more this year and be exposed to more higher quality games. If you were looking last year, you wouldn’t have thought Conor Fogarty would be nearly an All Star, Cillian Buckley was an All Star, John Power did what he did in the All-Ireland.”

Tyrrell never had any doubts about coming back.

“No, not at all. There wasn’t really a decision for me. I said to ye that morning (after the All-Ireland) retirement hadn’t entered my head and it didn’t enter my head with any of the lads going.

“I’m thoroughly enjoying my hurling, I’m injury free, I feel I have a lot more contribute to Kilkenny. Why would you retire?

“I love it. What’s not to love? If you were getting injuries and not enjoying it, you’d start to think (about retiring), but I mind myself extremely well, I’m focused and I know what I want to get out of my career.”

It takes time to build a career, though. He captained Kilkenny to the All-Ireland title in 2006 but it took until 2009 to “become the player I wanted to be”.

He explained: “I met someone, started talking to them and that really gave me a lot of confidence. Everyone is different. Everyone has doubts and fears, even the most confident and strongest guys out there. The best guys on the planet, Cristiano Ronaldo, Tom Brady, these guys, they have doubts and fears. It’s how you manage that and deal with it. From my point of view, it was then (2009) I banished those doubts and fears that Jackie Tyrrell is good enough to play for Kilkenny.”

He’s honest about the doubts he had starting off. “I was dropped for the (2006) quarter-final, came in for the semi-final. I was shaky enough, was very average in the semi-final, had a decent final. That would have given me a bit of confidence.

“I had a very shaky underage career. I was a very average minor. I had a very bad All-Ireland semi-final, David Forde took me for five points.

“In an U21 Leinster final, Rory Jacob scored a goal off me in the last minute, so I would have had a lot of doubts from then and would have been carrying a lot of baggage. ‘Am I good enough? Should I be even here?’

“So it took three years of winning All-Irelands to finally realise how good I was.”

Tyrrell was swift to pay tribute to JJ Delaney (“the greatest defender I’ve ever played with”) but is hopeful of more talent coming through.

“You’d often see these guys in club hurling and then you see them playing with Kilkenny and go, ‘God, are they the same guy?’ That’s just bedded in tradition and greatness with the black and amber. When you pull that jersey on, you couldn’t but feel a small bit inspired. There’s a kind of a magic.”

“It does incredible things to guys and inspires you and there’s so many examples of that.”

Last year’s drawn All-Ireland was one. “Even to get the draw was huge. Tipperary played unbelievably that day. They played so well, hit so many unbelievable scores. As a set of forwards, we probably equalled them. As a set of backs, we didn’t. And somehow we got a draw out of it.

“I felt we under-performed. There was an opportunity, serious scope for development. If I was the Tipperary manager trying to sit down, ‘Oh right lads, where are we going to improve?’ You’d be scratching your head for a while. Brian (Cody), I’m sure, sat down and looked at the defence and said, ‘There’s something we can do here’. That was reflected in some of the changes he made. In fairness, the guys that came in, they stepped up. As a unit we stepped up and that was probably the difference.”

A series of three blocks by Kilkenny players at one point in the replay underlined that: “It just sent out a signal no matter what they threw at us, we were going to be able for it. It’s probably one of the standout moments in my career. .”

Tomorrow night is another challenge. “We would have liked a few more games. That’s just an onus on ourselves when you’re training, that you have to get up to speed a lot quicker. But there won’t be any excuses going down to Cork.”