BRENDAN'S VOYAGE
Tipp’s Brendan Maher has come to realise that his dedication to hurling doesn’t have to exclude a life away from the game
IN WEEKS like this one, hurling can break over a man like a wave, washing away every other detail of his life. A hurler on the streets of Thurles, Cashel or Roscrea will walk in a world tightly hemmed by the game. All roads, conversations and impulses are directed to Croke Park.
This is life for the boys of summer. We presume they expect nothing different. With the acclaim of 70,000 or 80,000 people pouring off the steep stands like waterfalls, their days are filled with sunshine and profile. In the ninth season of an honourable inter-county career, Brendan Maher is old enough and bright enough to find another way.
The 28-year-old Tipperary mainstay is 70 minutes away from appearing in his sixth All-Ireland final. Maher is a schoolteacher and there has been an unshowy, disciplined bent to his career. Despite high achievements, his profile has stayed within a sensible orbit.
Last September he became the fourth man from his club, Borris-Ileigh, to captain Tipperary to the Liam MacCarthy Cup. He won an All-Ireland minor championship in 2006, aged 17; a year later, he captained the county as they retained that title. He played four seasons with the county Under 21s, was young hurler of the year in 2010 and has won two All-Stars, the first as a wing back and the second at centre-field.
Hurling and being excellent at it has defined his life in public. But, on weeks like this, ahead of days like this, he makes sure that the game does not swamp him entirely. There is life beyond Semple Stadium and Croke Park.
‘It’s something I’ve had to work on, actually,’ he says. It is 10 days out from the Galway match, and Maher talks as evening draws in over Thurles. He has a dip in the pool planned for after the interview, one more little detail to attend to in a world that could be filled with hurling.
‘You can get caught in this bubble where hurling takes over everything. Family, friendships, relationships, work all suffer as you hone in on training and playing. It almost becomes addictive. It’s something that I’ve had to work on, and look at my life, that there is a life after sport and hurling. I’ve a mortgage now, so things start to change and your whole perspective changes.
‘I was in that bubble at the age of 23 or 24, whereas now I’ve tried to make a little more effort off the field. There were years when I was afraid to go for a game of golf with my pals. You’d turn into a monk.
‘Now when I want to relax a bit, I’m comfortable with relaxing while still giving the hurling everything. I’ve learned to sort out those two things. It comes with a bit of experience too, but I’d say that’s something players struggle with.’
The Tipperary support is noted for the level of its expectations and sections of it are enthusiastic in sharing their views when those demands aren’t met.
Maher is accustomed to the rituals of the big August and September day now, though, down to the atmosphere inside Croke Park, down on the pitch, as the season narrows to its deciding moments.
‘For me now, it’s about mentally preparing myself for that battle. When you get to this stage of the year, you are on your own out on Croke Park. Communication is really difficult because of the huge crowd, you have to talk to your team-mates through gestures, through pointing, through facial expressions. We have the experience of that from recent seasons, but you still have to cope with it.’
And strong as the desire to win might be among supporters, it does not exceed the will to succeed in Maher and men like him.
‘I want to get really mentally right, really hungry for the game. It’s about emptying the tank on the day. After the match, regardless of the result, I want to be able to look myself in the mirror and say “I left everything out there”.
‘What I’m trying to do in the build-up is making sure I do everything right, sleeping more than eight hours, getting in the pool sessions, just to make sure you can say, “I did everything here”. That’s all we can do as a team, we make so many sacrifices. Sometimes you can get so caught up in it and so tense that you don’t do that.’
Hurling has not been able to resist the advances in tactics, technology and fitness that have so dramatically changed football over the past two decades. Maher is built like an 800m runner, lithe and lean. He attends to his nutritional needs with the care typical of the contemporary hurler, too.
And yet as he shapes his preparations for the week, as he remains vigilant to the risk of hurling toppling over into the rest of his life, he draws on a traditional place for his inspiration. In a world of GPS measurements and possession stats, Maher takes sustenance from an ancient resource.
‘When we go out there we are representing our families, our clubs and you want to do well for yourself and for them,’ he says. ‘When it goes badly, we’ve felt the backlash and particularly here in Tipperary where they are so proud of the hurling tradition. Personally I use all that to drive me forward and source energy from it.’
It takes gumption to recognise the emotional tributaries that feed into a performance on one of the biggest days of the year. Sport is supposed to be too precise for such messy variables now, as sterile as an operating theatre.
But Maher understands that a career such as his has been nourished by more than the inter-county game. He was a hurler long before he was a teenage talent the entire county knew would do great things.
The tension between what is expected of an elite talent, and their relationship with the club that taught them most of what they know has been making the news again. Dysfunction lies deep in the current structures, like an infection resistant to orthodox treatments. It will take a dramatic intervention to allow someone like Maher maintain their Tipperary career alongside a meaningful club one, and he knows it.
‘I’d love to give more time to my club, to train and play matches with the lads I grew up with,’ he says. ‘As it is, I will go back to Borris-Ileigh when the All-Ireland finally ends for us and I’ll play in the county championship and take the place of a lad who has been training all year. That’s not right, but that’s the way it is. And it’s not fair to say I can go back to the club when I’m finished with Tipp. I should be able to do both.’
Given that honesty, it is no surprise that he is an enthusiastic supporter of the ambitions of the Club Players Association.
‘The Club Players Association have set out a good document that tries to cover club and county. Maybe it hasn’t got all the answers, but it’s a genuine effort. It might have some of them and we should work on it.’
Hurling almost becomes addictive; it’s something I’ve had to work on and look at my life