I’m not King Henry’s heir, insists Top Cat Reid
Reid left sales rep job to ease pressure Criticism took toll on confidence last season
KILKENNY ace TJ Reid yesterday insisted he was not the ‘new’ Henry Shefflin. This week Kilkenny legend Eoin Larkin claimed that Reid, who racked up 0-15 in a man-of-the-match display in last Sunday’s Allianz League final win over Tipperary, was capable of stepping into 10-time All-Ireland winner Shefflin’s boots as one of the all-time greats. But Reid was adamant yesterday that he did not see himself in those terms. ‘Look, I’m not Henry Shefflin, I’m my own player, I’m very different than Henry,’ insisted Reid. ‘Henry was my idol that I tried to mimic him as much as I could,’ said Reid, paying homage to his Ballyhale clubmate. ‘It’s obviously nice to hear those things and it’s nice to sense that and know that you’re doing something right. ‘It does help our confidence as well when you hear people talking like that but you put that to bed fairly quickly because you’re only as good as your last game.’
IN jumping off the work treadmill, TJ Reid has rediscovered his hurling legs. The form of the 30-year-old veteran was the key in driving Kilkenny to an unexpected Allianz League hurling title last weekend – the Cats’ first since 2014 – but it did not happen by accident.
Reid, whose 0-15 tally in Sunday’s final tally took his spring season haul to 1-81 – second only to Tipperary’s Jason Forde in the spring scoring charts – revealed yesterday that his form has risen in correlation to his work burden easing.
Last year, the seventime All-Ireland winner quit his job as a sales rep to focus fulltime on running his own gym in Kilkenny and he is already reaping the benefit.
‘A lot of people didn’t know I was doing two jobs last year, I was a sales rep for Connolly’s Red Mills while running my own gym facility in Kilkenny and then trying to hurl as well,
‘I made a decision to step away from the sales role last October and concentrate fully on my own gym,’ revealed Reid yesterday.
‘It’s a massive relief because of the pressure of doing two jobs.
‘I was up at half five, opened the gym at half six, making sure things were in place for all the staff and then going on the road for a few hours before going back to the gym and after all that I had to go training.
‘When you are playing sport it’s all about having a routine and last year I was going from here to there with the two jobs, whereas this year I’m just in the gym and it’s a lot easier and energy levels are a lot higher. It’s a massive relief,’ added Reid. Ironically, his career pathway mirrors that of Mayo footballer Andy Moran, whose Indian summer proved so hot he was voted last season’s player of the year. Reid is the firm pre-Championship favourite to follow suit — he is marked out at 11/2 to take this year’s hurling gong — but he is likely to embrace the pressure rather than shrink. He has become accustomed to being one of the most targeted hurlers in the game, insisting that he sees it as a challenge rather than a drain. ‘It is hard,’ he confessed. ‘At puck-outs, they’ll try and spoil you and they’ll try and hold and grab you by pulling your hands back. ‘Even if the ball is at the other side of the field you’ll have a lad there in your face, not even watching the ball. ‘It is hard but a good player would respond to it, a bad player would put his head down and say, “I’m man-marked” and take the easy way out. ‘It’s about being mentally prepared, knowing you’re going to be facing it. ‘I can’t be whingeing and moaning about it so I just have to get on with it.’ And that is what he and Kilkenny have done, in the process proving critics wrong after Brian Cody’s Cats had been written off this season.
When they lost their opening two League games to Cork and Clare, it meant that Cody’s team had won just one of their previous six competitive games.
Reid admitted that the constant criticism had a negative impact, but revealed that he had made a private vow to get his game back on track, after scoring just 2-2 from open play in last year’s Championship.
‘No matter where we turned last year, be it papers, talking to people off the field, all the talk was that we were in transition and it was going to take two or three years to come back.
‘You can try and block all that out but it does creep in.
‘Last year we were on the rocks and the inner belief wasn’t there.
‘But you take responsibility and I train very hard on and off the field.
‘I’ve had great years with Kilkenny and winning, I suppose that’s what it’s all about, winning, and getting back to winning ways.
‘When you lose, I suppose, for Kilkenny we don’t like it and yeah,
for me, I could have easily said, ‘We’re gone now, I’m 30 years of age, I’ll concentrate on my business,’ but I didn’t. I want to get back to winning ways and there’s a great bunch of lads there now in this Kilkenny team.’
That may be the case, but even their 11-time All-Ireland winning manager Cody came under pressure, with calls from some commentators insisting he should stand down.
Reid points out that the players turned a deaf ear to such white noise.
‘It’s like any good manager in soccer, when you’re winning they’re all with you and then when you start losing they’re all against you. Now it’s been reversed again, Brian’s the greatest manager again.
‘At the end of the day, we’re just concentrating on what we do.
‘We love competing, getting back to those big games and getting back to winning.’ TJ Reid was at Castlecomer CS in Kilkenny to launch the GAA Super Games Centre in partnership with Sky Sports at the school.