The Making of Anthony Maher

The Kerry midfielder combines a potent centre-field cocktail of brain and brawn — the latter turning him into a genuine engine-room force, writes Mike Quirke

THERE are very few places in the world better than New York City on New Year’s Eve. We were over in 2009 on another team holiday celebrating what only a few months previous looked like a most unlikely All-Ireland victory.

Phil Quilter, a Tralee native and proud Kerry man played the genial host to our travelling party in one of his nightspots, Katra. Now, this wasn’t your run of the mill night club — it was a really popular venue, and as well as ourselves, it was heavily populated with a number of New York Jets — one of the city’s two pro football teams.