GALWAY SELECTOR FRANCIS Forde has the inside track on the threat that will be posed by Patrick ‘Bonner’ Maher in Croke Park next Sunday, having coached the Tipperary forward in school.
Forde said that Maher’s potential was obvious when he coached him at Banagher College in Offaly and he isn’t the least surprised how far the Lorrha clubman has progressed.
And schoolteacher Forde believes that Maher has been the biggest factor in Tipperary’s resurgence this summer.
“I have known Bonner for a long time. He is a super fella, an unbelievable attitude and I have a fair idea that what he brings to the dressing room, and what he brings to the pitch is just massive for that Tipperary team.
“I never actually taught him. It was a funny situation in Banagher, he was in the vocational school and I was in the convent.
“But I was over the team for one year when he was in Leaving Cert,” said Forde, who took charge of the team when the two schools in the Offaly town amalgamated.
“I remember him marking Paul Murphy from Kilkenny in a Leinster championship match and they had a fair auld battle because they were big players for both teams.
“But Bonner is a super lad. His professionalism is just unreal.
“He’s a massive player for Tipperary and the work that he does in terms of creating scores and aggressive running at the half-back line, it’s huge.
“Maybe sometimes he doesn’t get the credit that others get.”
A hamstring injury kept Maher out of Tipperary’s Munster quarter-final shock defeat at the hands of Cork but he returned for the qualifiers and has been superb as they hit 8-72 in big wins over Westmeath, Dublin and Clare.
Galway have not won an All-Ireland since they beat Tipperary in the 1988 decider and their rivalry has been massive in recent years.
Just a point separated the sides when Galway won in the 2015 All-Ireland semi-final and Tipperary secured a reversal last year.
But in this year’s league final Galway won by 3-21 to 0-14 and Forde knows Tipperary will have a massive point to prove this weekend.
“It’s no more than us playing Wexford in the Leinster final. At the end of the day we were playing a team and the last time we had played them they had beaten us,” said Forde.
“At the time it was a serious knock back to our season. I am sure Tipp will be looking at it that way.
“From a Tipp point of view there is plenty of history anyway with Galway but there is history over the last number of years of rip-roaring top notch games and just a point either side.
“There is no doubt that Tipp would have been hurt by the league final, of course they will use that as motivation, what player wouldn’t.
“If you have gone out previously and not had such a good day against an opponent you will want to make sure that you get the better of them the next time around. That’s sport and that’s the way these lads operate too.
“The next day you would expect that it will be a really tight game and we could all be on the edges of our seats with two or three minutes to go again.
“It might come down to a bit of luck but it’s all about coming out on the right side of the result.”
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