Maher’s quest for honours far from sated

Padraic Maher is hitting that sweet spot in his Tipperary hurling career where history is being made all around him, much of it by him.

He and a small group of current players, along with Declan Ryan, now forming an elite crew of Tipp men to have won three All-Ireland medals since 1971.

If they can make it four, perhaps in 2020, they will be spoken about in the same terms as the great Tipp group that dominated between 1961 and 1965.

Maher himself is chasing another personal milestone and a sixth All-Star, something that only Nicky English and Eoin Kelly have achieved before him in Tipp.

“Two of the finest names in the history of Tipperary hurling,” acknowledged Maher ahead of tomorrow’s announcement of the 2019 hurling All-Stars. “I didn’t even know about that record, to be honest.”

Holding onto the Liam MacCarthy Cup in 2020 would be a far greater achievement, in Maher’s eyes, though history hasn’t been kind in that regard.

He’s been part of two groups, in 2011 and 2017, that failed to successfully defend a title and it’s 1965 since a Tipp team did it.

The problem, as current manager Liam Sheedy admitted in 2017, is that ‘we’re not a county that does back to back very well’, adding that ‘the scars are there for everyone to see in that regard. We have a habit of going to sleep after we get one’.

Maher can’t disagree.

“They obviously have had issues because they haven’t done it,” said Maher.

“I think Cork did it in the mid-2000s, 2004 and 2005, but it hasn’t been done very often outside of that bar the Kilkenny lads.

In other years, after 2010 and 2016, from my own experience, there would have been a lot of emphasis on doing back to back but I don’t think you can look at that now.

"That’s very easy for me to say now but I just think from looking back on my own experience, if you’re going to put that pressure on yourself from the start of the year, it’s going to be a very long year.

"You’re going to drain yourself out, mentally and physically.

“I think the most important thing from my experience is that we train even harder if we can at all, as much if not more than this year.

“If you’d asked me, watching Limerick win last year, watching Galway win the year before, we would have trained extra hard in order to come back and try to knock them off their perch. Other teams will be trying to do that to us after this year.”

It’s a nice challenge to be faced with, one Maher wasn’t so sure he’d ever be concerned with just a few years ago, pre-2016, when the term ‘underachievers’ was being linked to this Tipp group.

“You’d definitely doubt whether you are ever going to get back there,” admitted the Thurles Sarsfields man.

“The ‘14 final, we probably felt got away from us when we could have won it, we lost (a semi-final) by a point in 2015 too.

"We had a lot of luck too then, beating Galway in a tight match in 2016 and were probably on the opposite side then in 2017 trying to come back and get to the final.

"So there were a lot of highs and a lot of lows but that makes them all the sweeter when you do get an opportunity to win the cup.

“The way it was put to me was we’ve played in seven finals now, that group of us.

That didn’t look like happening for a good number of years. When you look back now you do get a small bit of enjoyment and satisfaction out of it because it wasn’t looking like that for a few years.

Another piece of history that looks set to made this week is Seamus Callanan’s belated coronation as Hurler of the Year, something the All-Ireland winning captain has been nominated for, and overlooked for, three times before in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

“The last year we won the All-Ireland, 2016, he was very close to getting it,” said Maher.

“People can’t begrudge him winning one, that’s for sure.”