RONAN MAHER HAD plenty team-mates to share the celebrations with on Sunday afternoon in Croke Park but a couple that were absent sprung to mind in the aftermath of the glory.
Maher and his brother Padraic were manning the key defensive posts for Tipperary while flying the flag for Thurles Sarsfields.
A pair of his club-mates missed out. Michael Cahill, a long-standing Tipperary defensive stalwart, tore his cruciate in last October’s Tipperary county senior semi-final.
Earlier in the summer the luckless Billy McCarthy, who had emerged as a bright spot in the Tipperary senior ranks in 2018, suffered a serious leg injury in a club game.
“When I sat down in the dressing room after the match they were the first two lads that came to my head along with Bonner inside. I was playing yesterday for the likes of them and also my team-mates obviously but I had the two boys in the back of my head, them more than anyone deserve that All-Ireland.
“They put in savage work over the past two or three years but unfortunately they suffered bad injuries. At the back of my mind I was thinking of the two boys.
“He’s (Billy McCarthy) a full year out now at the minute and I think he’s a small big niggly at the minute but he’s doing a bit of training and he’s doing a bit of hurling so hopefully we’ll have him back fit and well for next year.”
Maher made his All-Ireland breakthrough in 2016 with Tipperary. His personal experiences in the interim have persuaded him to savour this second title.
“I just feel like we enjoyed it alright but we thought, well, I thought that it was going to be like that for another few years. They’re very tough won and being bet by a point in 2017 by Galway, then going out in 2018 early in the championship.
“It was a difficult journey back up to that but we got there eventually. The last few years have been very tough for this group.
“It’s just myself personally. I appreciated it but I appreciate this one a lot more. They don’t come around often enough and just enjoy it while we have it.”
Maher pinpointed the response to the Munster final loss as a pivotal moment in Tipperary’s season. He began life in the Garda Training College in Templemore the day after that heavy defeat to Limerick, a team featuring plenty players he was familiar with from his time previously in Mary Immaculate College.
“I was fresh enough, I couldn’t be sick going in that day. I suppose I was disappointed after the defeat but I suppose had to knuckle down. There were more important things that Monday morning to face into.
“Pretty good friends with a lot of them (Limerick players). I would have been, a good few of them, hurled with them. They dropped me a text there (after the All-Ireland win).”
