SERIOUS MAHERS
Padraic: We had no idea how bad things were getting.. Ronan & I had to isolate at our mother’s
PADRAIC MAHER boarded a flight for Spain last March and returned to a very different Ireland just days later.
The day after defeat to Galway ended their League campaign on March 8, the Tipperary hurlers f lew out for a training camp, landing in a country that was fast becoming one the Europe’s Covid- 19 hotspots.
Back home, before t he week was out, the then Taoiseach Leo Varad kar had announced t hat schools were to close as the virus made worrying inroads.
“That seems like a long time ago now,” says Maher. “We had a really good camp and, God, we didn’t know what we were really coming back to.
“I t k i n d o f h i t u s o n t h e Wednesday or the Thursday, that things were getting serious.
“Cheltenham was on that week and we were kind of following it through our sessions, we’d have it on the telly over at the camp, and we were just saying that a lot of people were giving out about it.
“We just thought when we came home that we might be facing into a two or three week kind of thing, that we might all have to lay low for a few weeks and then that would be it. We didn’t realise it was going to get this serious.
“Ireland changed a lot from when we went out that Monday morning to when we came back the following Friday night.
“We thought we were preparing f or the f i rst round of the Championship in six weeks’ time.
We didn’t expect this.”
On their return, the entire travelling party had to isolate for a fortnight. Maher and his brother Ronan, both gardai, had to take two weeks off though they weren’t discommoded as much as others.
“Obviously myself and Ronan were in the same boat so we rang our mother on t he
Thursday and sai d ,
‘ Are you happy for us to come home or do you want us to go missing for two weeks?’
“L i k e e v e r y I r i s h mammy she was happy, she said, ‘ Come home, don’t be stupid’. She just looked after herself for the two weeks as well. We just kind of kept ourselves to ourselves in the house for two weeks and that was kind of it.
“I think a l ot of l ads were i n the same boat. Luckily enough we had somewhere to go, we had somewhere to stay f or the two weeks. A couple of the lads had to put themselves up in digs and stuff.”