Pauric Mahony can’t wait to get back and do his bit for Ballygunner

Pauric Mahony hasn’t circled a date in the calendar, but the 23-year-old intends to have a good body of work under his belt come next summer so that he can play a full part in Waterford’s 2016 championship campaign.

The uncertainty over his return is complicated by more than just his recovery from the broken tibia suffered while playing for Ballygunner last May.

Should his club account for Na Piarsaigh in Sunday’s Munster final, then he may have to wait even longer to clock in for county duties. Not the worst of conundrums. Mahony coped well with the initial inactivity last summer, but standing on the sidelines watching his Ballygunner and Waterford colleagues go through their paces began to wear him down mentally and it was three months before he could dispense with the crutches.

“I don’t have a timeframe yet for when I’m going to be back,” he said. “But if we were to win on Sunday, it would certainly be a big incentive over the next few months to train hard. I’ve been back doing a bit of jogging.”

Mahony is running every third day, strengthening his leg in the gym, cycling and swimming. The light at the end of the tunnel is approaching, but not nearly fast enough for this weekend’s meeting with the Limerick champions.

Denis Walsh likes to turn the room over to his players before they take the field so Mahony will have his say at some point. But he will then take his seat in the stand alongside brother Philip who is suspended for the game after seeing red against Glen Rovers.

Cruel blows both for the club and the Mahony family whose links with Ballygunner stretch back to its foundation and their grandfather while their father Mick and three uncles played on the side that won their only Munster in 2001.With a cousin on the pitch and an uncle on the sideline, the family won’t be without its representation as the Waterford champions seek to avoid a seventh provincial final loss in eight appearances.

“There’s something hanging over the present team, that we have to win one to prove ourselves to be as good as that team in 2001,” said Mahony. “Most of the lads have four county medals since this group of players (started). If you look at the average age of the team, it’s young still. We’ve only one player 30, one at 27 and then the rest are 26 or younger, so we’ve a very young team and there’s been a lot of success there for that. But we know it’s time to step up now and aim for the bigger prizes.”

The same could be said for Waterford. League champions last season, they lost a Munster decider to Tipperary and an All-Ireland semi-final to Kilkenny with Austin Gleeson suggesting the latter’s physicality amounted to a case of boys against men.

“I’ll have to disagree with Austin a bit,” said Mahony. “Two years ago, Clare won the championship and everyone said the game changed, it was a fast running game about fitness and you don’t need to have that bulk. Kilkenny win it and everyone is saying it is about physicality, so it is about finding a balance..”

Nowhere more so than in his half-forward line, he believes. Despite all the talk of Waterford’s sweeper system, he believes Kilkenny aren’t all that different than themselves when it comes to setting out their stalls.

“They say Kilkenny don’t have tactics, but that is a myth because they don’t go back for the fun of it. Where we need to develop is to get back up the field like the Kilkenny forwards do because the likes of TJ (Reid) put in as much work as the likes of Jake Dillon put in for us this year.”

Mahony, you sense, can’t wait do his bit.