I’d change nothing, if we had to play the All-Ireland again
Ballygunner’s Pauric Mahony insists only lack ofexperience cost Déise in September
PAURIC MAHONY has only watched bits and pieces of last September’s All-Ireland hurling final. He has yet to sit through the whole game. He hasn’t had the time. As soon as Waterford’s wonderful summer journey came to its disappointing end, the forward placed himself in club mode.
The Déise’s eventful season caused a log-jam of fixtures and club footballers in Waterford are still feeling the effects as their senior championship had only reached the semi-final stage last Thursday.
In Ballygunner, they have barely had a moment to reflect on their county title success. Mahony says they went to Jack Meade’s Bar for a few pints on the Sunday evening, but the following morning, they were already focused on making a dent in the provincial championship.
That attitude has worked. This afternoon, Ballygunner are on the cusp of becoming kings of Munster, 16 years after they first managed that feat. Mahony was only nine years old on that cold December afternoon in 2001, but his memory remains crystal-clear.
As it will be this afternoon against Na Piarsaigh, the entire village of Ballygunner was transplanted to Semple Stadium for the day and a young Mahony saw his uncle Billy O’Sullivan lift the trophy for the club.
It was a huge day for his family. Not only was his uncle, but his father, Michael, was also playing. When it comes to hurling pedigree, Mahony has it on both sides of his family. Sixteen years on, the family will play another key role.
His older brother, Philip delivered some rousing displays from the half-back line as they cut a swathe through Munster while Pauric has underlined his reputation as one of the most reliable dead-ball strikers in the modern game in recent weeks. Watching Mahony stooped over a placed-ball for both club and county, it seems like he was born to take frees. But it was an accident of circumstance that the responsibility was ever thrust upon him. On the morning of his first Championship game for Waterford in June 2011, then-manager Davy Fitzgerald took the teenage Mahony aside. Richie Foley had rolled his ankle practising frees, leaving the Déise without a free-taker ahead of meeting Limerick in Semple Stadium. Fitzgerald had seen Mahony consistently score frees for UCC Freshers in the spring and made a mental note. ‘Pauric, you are on the frees,’ he told the teenager before the team left for Thurles.
‘Davy was nice about it,’ Mahony recalls. ‘He just said “look, if they go over, they go over. If they don’t, don’t worry about it, we will put someone else on them”. That was kind of relaxing to hear because it was my debut the same day.’
Mahony scored seven points that day, nailing four frees (he also had a penalty saved by Nickie Quaid). And ever since, apart from the year he had out of the game recovering from a horrific shin-bone fracture, his reliability has been a crutch for both Waterford and Ballygunner to lean upon.
‘Not really,’ Mahony says when asked if he was always a freetaker. ‘I never hit the frees for Ballygunner until 2011, after I played my first game for Waterford. On the back of me hitting the frees for Waterford, I started hitting them for the club.’
Since that Munster semi-final six-and-a-half years ago, Mahony has honed his free-taking technique to such an extent that he is almost always expected to score when he strikes a dead ball. And he has become a dab hand at ignoring the noise, whether it is the sound of 82,300 spectators on All-Ireland final day or a boisterous group of youthful Thurles Sarsfields supporters behind one of the goals at Semple Stadium.
‘Someone at work asked me last week, did I not notice all the noise when I was hitting those frees against Thurles, from all the young kids behind the goal. But I didn’t hear any noise. You need to block it out. If you let outside noise seep in, you are not focused on the routine. And it is about following the routine, every single time.
‘And it has to be the same, whether it is an All-Ireland final or just practising up in the field in Bally-
If you don’t celebrate success, what is the point in playing?
gunner on a Tuesday night. As a free-taker, you have to trust in what you are doing, trust in your routine, and back yourself. Any free-taker would tell you the same thing.’
Of course, they don’t all go over. In the 2016 Championship, Mahony stood over a last-gasp, long-range free to take the All-Ireland semifinal replay against Kilkenny into extra-time. It dropped short, into the grateful hand of Eoin Murphy.
But he believes, as a free-taker, it is important to be able to park the ones that you miss. ‘You have to forget about that. And that is the main thing as a free-taker, that you have to be ready to take the next free, because there will always be another one.
‘I would visualise before taking a free, the shot going over the bar and once you do that, how can you be nervous?’
With Derek McGrath remaining at the helm for 2018, Mahony is confident that the Déise can build on what was achieved this year. When he reflects on the All-Ireland final defeat, he puts the narrow loss down to experience.
Many of the Galway players were playing in their third decider. For most Waterford players, it was their first. Going down the straight, that mattered so much.
‘We just came across a Galway side that had been there on a couple of occasions before. We take our hats off to them, they are worthy champions. No doubt about it, they were the best team in 2017.
‘But I wouldn’t change a whole lot if we got back to the final again. I thought our buildup was very good, it was low-key, all we were focused on was getting a performance for 70/ 75 minutes.
‘We didn’t perform to our standards and when the game was in the melting pot with 15 minutes to go, Galway stood up and got the crucial scores.’
It has been a hectic season for Mahony and given the serious leg injury he suffered not so long ago, he understands that he has to manage his body correctly and ensure that it is given time to recover.
‘Not necessarily because of the injury, would I feel that recovery is important. I just think that every GAA player is now a lot more conscious of their body and what works best. ‘It is about finding the balance between absolute obsession and having a bit of downtime. It is still an amateur game and you do need to have a bit of a life, too. ‘That’s why we did celebrate the county title. You have to, otherwise what are you doing it for? ‘In fairness, they were low-key celebrations, a few pints. The feeling in the dressing-room after the county final was that even though we were delighted, we also needed to kick on.’ 16 years after watching his father and uncle claim Ballygunner’s first Munster title, Pauric Mahony’s dependency from the dead-ball might, ultimately, be what makes the difference and helps the club become kings of Munster again.