I THOUGHT THERE WAS ANOTHER TWO YEARS IN ME, I’M STILL ONLY 32
‘If I hadn’t been a sub at the start, I might not have been hungry’ His honours-laden career ended too soon but Kilkenny legend harbours no bitterness
DUIGNAN: When I was down in your club doing This Is Your Life, I would have learnt a bit about you starting out in Tullaroan. Can anybody, no matter where they are born, become a top class hurler or how much does background and tradition have to do with it?
WALSH: I do think it’s a huge thing to have a background, to have the tradition. We were very lucky where we were born, where we were raised –- in Kilkenny, in Tullaroan. We don’t play Gaelic football, very little of it anyway! We don’t play soccer, really. We don’t play rugby.
So when you start out, three or four years of age, for 99 per cent of young lads in Kilkenny it’s hurling, day-in, day-out. When you spend so much time playing one sport, naturally then you’re going to have guys rise to the top.
In small parishes, you might have three or four boys; in my class at school there was 16 boys, unheard of in Tullaroan. Ten or 11 were brilliant hurlers. We lived it. Every break-time for our school years. Then on to St Kieran’s College, same thing again. We were very lucky that our whole environment was hurling. That’s what we lived for and how we became what we are.
DUIGNAN: Your grandfather Paddy Grace was a famous hurler – was he a big influence? WALSH: He was my mam’s father. He was such an influence on her that, to this day, they take their holidays around our hurling matches. When we were in school or in college playing matches during the week, they’d take their annual leave during the week to go to those matches. That’s what they love doing. She would have got that off her father, Paddy Grace.
DUIGNAN: You won everything in Tullaroan at underage level?
WALSH: Won everything we were involved with. Won Féile, county title. Seven-a-sides. Under 16, minor, U21. Everything except senior. From U13s to minor, I was always either corner-back or fullback. I never played forward; never played in the half-back line until I’d say I was a Kilkenny minor.
DUIGNAN: That’s amazing considering you’ll always be remembered as a number five. You ended up winning nine consecutive AllStars in four different lines, which will hardly be emulated – was your philosophy the same?
WALSH: You do learn. I remember playing U16, in a north final I was playing full-back on a very quick lad. It was never brought up at inter-county but speed wouldn’t have been a big thing for me.
Your man darted around me and scored a good bit that day. I remember making sure that the next day it wouldn’t happen. It’s grand following your man but my thing was ‘get to the ball first’. Because if I didn’t get to it, I wouldn’t be able to get to him and take it off him.
DUIGNAN: How did you make up for the lack of size and get to be so strong in the air? High ball was one of your massive strengths.
WALSH: It’s very difficult and very simple at the same time. Liam Keoghan would have been brilliant at catching balls and he wasn’t that big. My father would have won a county final in ’94 and played with him. He was showing my father and my father showed me.
It’s all technique. It’s a lot to do with practising. When we were in Kieran’s or down at Tullaroan matches, we used to play catching games. Even at lunchtime. We mightn’t have had a hurl at times. Just a lad pucking up a ball, seven or eight jumping for a ball. Just having a laugh.
DUIGNAN: Your mother told a story at the
This Is Your Life evening about you standing on the wall at home and she throwing the ball and you jumping off it and catching it? You’d keep her out there all day – ‘one more, one more’.
WALSH: Yeah. We were lucky. We had nothing to keep us in the house. Televisions were poor. You only had one or two. PlayStation? I remember the Sega Master system was only starting to come – nobody really had it. DUIGNAN: Tell me about your time then at St Kieran’s. WALSH: Eoin Kelly [Tipperary] came in in fifth year and it was like Ronaldo coming in to the school. He was like a hero at that stage. Because he was so good, everyone wanted to do what he did. He used to put lead in the bottom of his hurls, to weight them. Well we had one lad from Ballyhale, he made a good bit of money from it he started putting lead in the hurls for two pounds! Drill a hole in the bottom, fill it with lead, so you’d hit the ball harder. Eoin was unbelievable. What TJ Reid was doing at this moment of time, he was doing at schools level. Scoring 1-10, 1-11 every game. Could hit it left and right. Very strong. Unmarkable. Myself and Brian Carroll [Offaly] would have marked each other. At the end they wouldn’t let us because we were always fighting! We had great battles. It was a different time back then. Offaly were at their height. AllIreland contenders. From ‘95 to 2001 - they were the team. When we were minor, Offaly beat us. First time Kilkenny were beaten in 10 years. Brian Carroll was part of that.
DUIGNAN: You mention fighting with Brian Carroll in training. That fiery spirit was a huge part of your make-up. Only one player
I knew with Offaly was the same at every training, every match Martin Hanamy. He was 100 per cent, all of the time. The same for you?
WALSH: When you’re getting stuck into the rucks, stuck into players, stuck into the whole match itself, that’s when I went home on a high. That’s what I got a buzz off.
You have to play to your strengths. I found when I wasn’t getting stuck in, trying to play ‘lovely hurling’ or trying to go around catching balls – because some lads would be saying ‘you need to relax a bit’ - I found you’re nearly lazy, not yourself. It didn’t suit.
DUIGNAN: From 1993 to 2000, when you were 10 to 17, you hadn’t seen Kilkenny win an All-Ireland?
WALSH: You forget that because it’s happening so often. I remember 2000 as a supporter, it was a big day for us. Kilkenny didn’t want to become the first team to lose three All-Irelands in a row. I’ll never forget where I was sitting in the Cusack Stand. It was such an outpouring of emotion.
DUIGNAN: Then came the Kilkenny call-up in 2002. In your wildest dreams, could you have imagined you’d be sitting here now with 10 Leinsters, nine AllIrelands, seven National Leagues, and nine All-Stars – unbelievable success?
WALSH: First night, inside in O’Loughlin’s. Marking Eddie Brennan. That was the dream. Then it’s not good enough any more to just be
a sub – you want to be playing
If I hadn’t been a sub at the start I mightn’t have realised how bad it felt not to be playing. I mightn’t have been as hungry. Sunday was a release for me. You go out and let it all go.
I was a sub in 2002 but after that, whether it was a cup game, challenge, Leinster or All-Ireland, I’d say 99 per cent of the time, once I was fit, Brian Cody picked me.
So until my last year, I never had the whole nervousness of not making the team. I was never really dropped. I never had any reason to be insecure.
DUIGNAN: Did Cody ever say ‘you’re a key player’?
WALSH: Brian wouldn’t be going around having chats with you about that kind of stuff. He’d never ask you to watch this or watch that, your left side, right side, high ball, whatever. He’d just say: ‘Go out and take over the field’. That’s all he used ever say to me.
When he says that to you, you’d be saying to yourself then, ‘Let’s go be Man of the Match then.’ It didn’t always work out but that’s how you’d feel.
DUIGNAN: From being untouchable then to how it finished in 2014? How was that?
WALSH: I was never going to go out on a high. I was always going to go out whenever I was dropped. Now I didn’t expect it to come so soon. I thought I’d get another two years out of it. I’m only 33 this May.
I could never say anything because I had a manager who picked me from 19 years of age until 30, without ever getting dropped. I could never give out; never wanted to give out.
I’ve seen so many great players being subs. They put All-Ireland medals in my pocket. So I felt that duty. Inside I felt bad. You want to be on the team, not be a sub, but you don’t want to let them down because they were subs for you.
DUIGNAN: Was it disappointment, frustration, anger or a bit of everything?
WALSH: It was disappointing. It was a tough year. Lads will probably say you have so many All-Ireland medals, you wouldn’t feel sorry for him. And I never felt sorry for myself.
But it was just a place I didn’t want to be. A sub. Because you do everything, but you don’t have that release of a Sunday. Even if you got on for five minutes you might have some sort of satisfaction.
But come Monday, you weren’t sore.
DUIGNAN: When did it become apparent it wasn’t going to happen?
WALSH: It was before the first round of Championship, after the League finished up, that they put me up into the forwards. That was a big sucker punch. Because I knew I wasn’t as good a forward as the players that were there. We had brilliant forwards. That’s probably why we won so much.
When you’re not playing, sure everyone would be telling you you’re flying it. Lads would be telling you that on the street. I’d have no complaints.
DUIGNAN: The fact that it was your younger brother Pádraig coming in and taking up your position – did that make it easier or harder?
WALSH: It made it way easier. I was delighted for him. If it was another player, you might be thinking, ‘Ah I hope it doesn’t go as well today!’
DUIGNAN: You think like that when you’re a sub – hope you play badly, but we still win the game!
WALSH: Everyone thinks that, whether they admit it or not. But when it’s your own brother you don’t.
It was easier with him. That was his first All-Ireland medal. I’m sure he was mad to see me get back on the team as well.
We were very close that way on the hurling side of things. We wouldn’t be spilling our hearts out to each other or anything like that but we both wanted each other to do very well.
DUIGNAN: When Kilkenny won the All-Ireland in 2014, there was the famous scene of the rest of the team calling out to the house? Did you not feel a part of it?
WALSH: As regards that All-Ireland medal, I wouldn’t be brushing it to one side. I felt it was probably the hardest medal I won because I had to work so hard without the claps on the back, the praise, but you still do everything. I would cherish that medal. Felt very much part of it. The whole thing of how many All-Ireland medals did you win on the field – if you were a sub, you did it all. Except the match day.
We had players who were out of this world. We had a manager and a management team who were out of this world. And the same with the county board. We were blessed. There is no real secret only that it all came together.
They thought when DJ [Carey] went it would all fall apart. Same when Henry [Shefflin] went.
DUIGNAN:
Any of those players you played with you’d pick out?
WALSH: Ah, sure JJ [Delaney] was out of this world. You’d never see anyone getting the better of him. He was just brilliant. What you’d see him doing on big days he did every day in training. Same with his club Johnstown.
You have good players and then you have special players. Go down through them. Henry, TJ [Reid], Richie [Hogan], JJ [Delaney]– we were very lucky so many came at the one time.
An awful lot was made of our physicality but the skill level… Them boys could make the ball talk.
DUIGNAN: That physicality was sometimes questioned.
WALSH: We never had tactical meetings about going to verbally say anything to anyone, or physically do anything to anyone. There were times we were on the edge but most of it was on the ball. While you mightn’t have got the ball, lads were going for the ball. We always felt happy in our own conscience that we were doing the right thing. Our supporters loved it as well, loved the physicality.
DUIGNAN: The incident in the 2011 final where you left referee Brian Gavin with a bloody nose will always be remembered. Were you trying to get a swipe at Eoin Kelly, your old schoolmate?!
WALSH: There was a bit of scuffling going on. I don’t know who I was going for but I wasn’t trying to hit the referee anyway! I was trying to shove someone.
DUIGNAN: Worried that you were going to be sent off?
WALSH: I was nervous. There was such a delay. Good five or six minutes. I was trying to walk around quietly. I was very lucky Brian Gavin was a hurling man. If you were to go by the rulebook or technically this or that, I could have got sent off.
DUIGNAN: The day with Lar [Corbett] shadowing you in the 2012 All-Ireland semi-final and all the jokes that followed – getting in beside you in the bed, the wedding photo with him in the background. From my point of view there was a serious fall-out. I said he was a disgrace and it’s the first page of his book. I chatted to him afterwards – he was upset about it. What did you make of it?
WALSH: Jackie [Tyrell] was after marking Lar out of it in the previous year’s All-Ireland so he felt maybe that the same was going to happen again, and that there was no point nothing really happening for him, that he’d take me out of the game as well.
I thought he should have backed himself more, said ‘let’s take Jackie into the full-back line’ or go man-on-man and see who comes out the winner. It just backfired.
DUIGNAN: Any particular match stand out for you?
WALSH: The ‘06 final against Cork was the greatest of them all. They had beaten us in the ’04 final when we were going for three-ina-row. I was down in UCC at the time, so there was great banter but real intense rivalry.
We went from winning two AllIrelands to wondering would you ever be in another final again.
To win ’06 when they were favourites… when we were a team in transition they were telling us. That was the greatest of all. Brilliant.
DUIGNAN:
Worst?
WALSH: 2013 against Cork, the quarter-final in Thurles. The day Henry was sent off. They were better than us. We just weren’t up to our usual standard. In 2010, we hurled well but Tipperary were brilliant that day.
DUIGNAN: Who were the players you rated highly outside of Kilkenny?
WALSH: Ben O’Connor would have been my favourite. I thought he was just brilliant. I followed him for Newtownshandrum as well. Pure hurler. Could give it as much as he took it as well. Loved marking him, and watching him.
DUIGNAN: How is it now watching Kilkenny after you retired, particularly with the brother Pádraig there?
WALSH: The disappointment of my last year, I’ve no grá to be saying, ‘I could still be in there on the team’. No unfinished business. I know I wasn’t picked in my last year. I’ve just enjoyed the matches as a supporter.
DUIGNAN: Playing still with
Tullaroan?
WALSH: That’s my aim, to play till I’m 40. With the club’s top team we’re intermediate now. So eight more years or so.
DUIGNAN: One last thing I want to ask. In 2009 you won Hurler of the Year, Texaco Player of the Year, GPA player of the Year. On my side, my wife Edel died sadly that September, the Sunday after the All-Ireland. You sent a parcel down to the house with Aidan Fogarty who used to hurl with Offaly, with jerseys and socks and togs and your red helmet which my son Seán wore for years after. Where did that gesture come from?
WALSH: When I was young, Bill Hennessy played with Kilkenny. I remember my mother gave him a programme, I think it was Antrim v Kilkenny in an All-Ireland semifinal. He had the whole Kilkenny team sign it and bring it back to me.
That meant so much as a young lad. Coming on a county team, you’re trying to be modest, trying to look at it from a kid’s perspective. You’re just hoping that it would help a bit.
DUIGNAN: The helmet was signed inside. Seán wore it out. It meant an awful lot.