IN THE BAD old days Wayne McNamara learned how to handle the heat.
Now when he steps out of a bikram yoga session, he can thank his thick skin for saving him from early retirement and paving the way to his first Munster Championship medal.
Tomorrow McNamara takes up his usual spot at centre-back as Limerick look to banish near neighbours Clare and book their place in the All-Ireland hurling final on 8 September.
Win and the Treaty will be one step closer to the title which has been so desperately elusive since the heroes of ’73 brought Liam home to the Shannon 40 years ago.
It’s five weeks since Limerick beat Cork in the provincial decider and sparked wild celebrations, a reminder of just how much hurling means to the county and just how long they have waited for success.
McNamara knows all about that passion. He has known about it since his Championship debut against Offaly in the summer of 2008. Joe Bergin scored 3-2 that day and Limerick lost by 10 points, much to the disgust of their fans.
A cup of coffee was thrown from the stands as the teams went down the tunnel at half-time.
“It was bad. We were bad,” he recalls. “We let ourselves down. We let them down too.”
I’m not sure if [a player] was hit or not but look, that’s the way it is. To be honest if I put myself in that position, I’d have thought about it too because we were playing so bad! We let ourselves down.
When he looks back now, those wilderness years from 2008-2010 seem like a different world. McNamara is the first to take responsibility and admits that the players didn’t do enough on the field or off it. He trained hard, sure, but he didn’t always eat properly or get enough rest.
The whole house of cards nearly came tumbling down in 2010. Between work and training he damaged a disc in his back — “it’d be tough enough to tie the laces” — and he was on the brink of quitting altogether.
Determined to give himself one last shot he turned to bikram yoga, regularly immersing himself in 40-degree heat for what he describes as “an hour and a half of torture.”
At its peak he went once a week before his heavy training schedule forced him to cut back, though he still tries to fit in a few sessions during the inter-county downtime in the winter.
“I got sorted and came back and said I’d give it one right go and do whatever it took to prove I was good enough for this level. Pre-Justin [McCarthy] I hadn’t proved to myself that I was good enough.
I had a stubborn attitude myself. I wanted to prove to myself more that anyone that I was good enough so I came back and Jerry Wallace and Donal O’Grady came in and Jerry was incredible. There was a discipline in training and off the field as well.It was great. We’d work hard but the team was improving so you could see the benefits of what we were doing.
This season, with John Allen at the helm, it all finally clicked for Limerick. The Munster title was their first since 1996 and on a personal note, McNamara’s performances at centre-back have placed him at the heart of most All-Star lists.
But the glory days of July has long since been replaced with thoughts of August and dreams of September. Fit and focused, a win tomorrow would take Limerick one step closer to their final destination.
