Walsh wants to improve on 'disappointing' season

As he embarks on another season in the famous back and amber jersey, Kilkenny defender Tommy Walsh seems as hungry as ever to add to his haul of medals and trophies.

Kilkenny ended last season as Allianz League and All-Ireland SHC champions once again, but missing out on an All-Star award for the first time in his senior inter-county career gnawed at Walsh.

Obviously keen to recapture his best form in 2013, he said: "I wasn't hugely disappointed I didn't get the All-Star. I was hugely disappointed I didn’t play well enough to win one, but I didn’t deserve one last year.

“Any player will tell you, the first thing they look at before you do anything or win anything is your own performance. You want to do well every day you go out.

"You want to train well and this year I’ll be hoping I’ll be able to pick it up again because it was disappointing I didn’t hurl terrifically well last year.

“Once or twice maybe I did, but other than that, it wasn’t that I was hurling badly, I just didn’t feel I was hurling well.

“But the be-all and end-all is why it’s a team sport. Other lads performed well and there were enough Kilkenny lads doing it to win. It’s hard to put your finger on it. I’d be trying different things during the year but things didn’t work out.”

The influential wing back, who won nine All-Stars between 2003 and 2011, will face familiar opponents when Kilkenny begin their Division 1A campaign away to Galway next Sunday.

The counties clashed on three occasions in last summer's Championship with the Tribesmen famously winning the Leinster title for the first time, beating Kilkenny by 10 points in the process, and Walsh and company gaining revenge in an All-Ireland final replay.

The 29-year-old said that Brian Cody's men are on guard to avoid a repeat of that nightmare provincial final display this year, and are determined to show it was a one-off result.

“We had always prided ourselves on the fact that no matter who we were playing, we got our own heads right and never took anyone for granted," added Walsh.

“That Leinster final brought us back down to earth. We were after winning a good few All-Irelands, but you can still be beaten and can’t take any team for granted.

“Hopefully this year it will serve as a lesson, whether it is Galway, Dublin, Offaly or whoever...anyone can beat us if we’re not right.”

Walsh was back in competitive action last Sunday, playing for Leinster in their M Donnelly Interprovincial Hurling semi-final defeat to an all-Galway Connacht side.

Although the result did not go Leinster's way, the game whetted Walsh's appetite for more and he clearly relishes the regularity of matches that the Allianz League brings - five group matches in six weeks before the semi-finals and final.

“This is my favourite time of year because you are playing. Once the first match started last Sunday with Leinster, we’ll be playing nearly every week probably for seven or eight weeks.

"That’s my favourite time of year. You do a bit of training during the week and a match at the weekend. Because our division is so small there are usually big crowds and they are always against big rivals like Waterford, Tipp or Galway.

“So they’re huge matches. You’re so fresh from the winter of doing nothing that you are really hungry. We are just lucky enough we’ve had the players to win the things we have tried to win.

“This year will be no different. We will be going gung-ho to try to win. We have Galway first and they gave us a lot of problems last year.”