THE DRIVE FOR Five will soon be underway. Not that Diarmaid Byrnes and Limerick are looking too far down the line.
“It’s another year,” the highest-scoring defender in hurling history says at the launch of the 2024 Allianz Hurling League.
More on that shortly, but first, just how have the Treaty maintained their high standards and levels of consistency?
“Jesus, I don’t know. I thought ye were the experts! Fuck sake… I don’t know.
“For me, personally, it’s just enjoyment. I know a lot of lads might be satisfied with winning whatever but I don’t know what’s in this group, there’s just a crazy competitiveness.
“Hego [Gearóid Hegarty] and Peter Casey — in a hotel for pre-game, we’ll play table tennis, or in a school, we’ll go into the hall and play basketball or something. Sometimes you’re killing them right before a match! Mad stuff altogether, but really enjoyable.
“There’s that competitiveness that has grown in us over the last couple of years. As athletes, we are in the game. That helps us to grow, and that’s a natural thing: to want more, to be better every day.
“Competitiveness and enjoying it. You have to enjoy these moments, and I think we are.”
Talk of the historic All-Ireland five in-a-row soon rolls around. Surely, it’s on the mind?
Byrnes isn’t one for much reflection, but he looks to 2023 for some anecdotes.
“We had a goal going into the last round of the Munster championship last year, and it was solely just to beat Cork and remain the championship. How foolish would we have been prior to the Munster championship to be looking forward to an All-Ireland semi-final?
“I know it’s obviously the elephant in the room regarding the media perspective. My own family at home over Christmas, you bump into people and it’s, ‘Jaysis, go on now, Byrnsie,’ stupid little stuff, pub talk or whatever. We build up an immunity with regards dealing with those situations. There’s experience in the group and it will definitely stand to us this year, as it did last year and the previous year.
“It’s just learning different things, taking nuggets, and we’ll probably apply different things this year. We’ll treat this year no different. Every team will get the same required attention. Our own individual preparation and recovery, I know I won’t be any different anyway, and the rest of the group will be in the same boat.
“Looking forward to the championship, looking forward to the challenge, but we’ll get the league out of the way first.”
No doubt there’ll be more unpredictability and adversity ahead, many hurdles to clear en route to the ultimate hurling greatness.
“How we’ve adapted over the last few years shows the strength in our panel,” he says. “The younger lads, they’ve added massively. The strength and belief and trust in our panel is how we’ve gotten through it.”
The 30-year-old enjoyed an extended break in Dubai at the start of last year, and kept the tradition going with a week’s holiday at the end of November.
“It was a grand little reset, but it’s probably better to be back to be honest. I’m one to be back in training, a bit of a home bird.”
Patrickswell is that for Byrnes, the proud club stabling the last three Hurlers of the Year. Aaron Gillane is the current title holder, with Byrnes and Cian Lynch taking the gong in 2022 and 2021 respectively.
“It’s an Irish thing, you don’t give yourself too much praise,” Byrnes, who works with DHL Global Forwarding, says. “Between the three of us, we’d kind of brush it off, ‘Ah yeah, it’s great,’ but it really is. It’s special for us.
“Patrickswell is very small. You drive through it in less than a minute: a shop, a few pubs and a hairdresser. There’s been a great history of Patrickswell people contributing to Limerick hurling and that’s what we look at, how can we continue that? It’s where we started, where we’ll finish.
“Aaron really and truly deserved it. He was absolutely class the whole year, his consistency was unbelievable. I was actually sickened I was nominated because I was like, ‘Jesus I actually don’t want to win it.’ You never know with these kinds of things, even though I knew I wasn’t going to because of Aaron’s performances.’
“It was nice for the three of us. The club got great recognition, some of our past trainers got a great buzz out of it. I’m a bit older than the lads but we were on the same teams up along. I could harp on about it all day, but the club is something special for me.”
It’s that to so many, and Byrnes hails JP McManus’s recent generous donation that will have a huge impact across the country.
Before Christmas, the Limerick billionaire hit the headlines when news broke that he would give every GAA county board in Ireland €1 million to be shared equally among all codes.
“The fact that it goes across all codes is special, not just hurling and football. It’s not just male sport. The likes of Aaron’s girlfriend [Róisín Ambrose] playing for the Limerick football team and so on.
“You meet them in Rathkeale some nights and you know what they’re doing training-wise so that donation will feed to every community across the country, and that’s the importance of it. That’s special and it is brilliant.”
Limerick’s Diarmaid Byrnes was speaking at the launch of the 2024 Allianz Hurling League.
