When you see Pádraic Maher up close the first thing that strikes you is the fact he is not seven feet tall.
The Tipperary wing-back is an athletic, 6’1″ young man who smiles quite a lot and seems to be unfailingly polite.
It is difficult to marry this to the image we have of him on the hurling field – that of a snarling, intimidating character of unrelenting ferociousness and inhuman strength. The kind of man who sends Joe Canning clattering over the sideline with a shoulder that made a crowd of 54,248 in Croke Park collectively wince.
However at the full-time whistle of Sunday’s tense All-Ireland semi-final win over Tipperary there was possibly not a more relieved person than Maher on Jones’s Road.
In the 72nd minute the Thurles Sarsfields defender compounded an earlier mistake by Dan McCormack, giving away possession and allowing last year’s match-winner Shane Maloney to close the gap to a single point.
Galway may have had a fair claim on this game, having led for long periods, but Maher did not deserve to shoulder the responsibility of Tipperary coughing up this victory at the death.
Sure enough, there was time for one more puckout from Darren Gleeson and when the ball broke it was Maher again on hand to double on the sliothar and send it far into Galway territory. David Collins fumbled possession and Tipperary had a sideline ball – the match was over.
Maher leapt into the arms of Michael Cahill and they danced a jig of delight, a jig of relief. This had been too close for comfort. Behind for the majority of the game, an ill-advised one-two between Brendan Maher and Seamus Kennedy had allowed Joseph Cooney in to score a goal early in the second half and Tipp needed a response.
It came from their engine room, the half-back line and midfield quintet who had been the driving force behind their stroll through the Munster championship. First Maher’s younger brother Ronan knocked over a massive point and then the older sibling got himself on the scoreboard.
The powerful Michael Breen and Brendan Maher started to get on top of Johnny Coen and David Burke and all of a sudden Tipperary were finding the time and space to play high quality ball into their forward line.
“I thought midfield and the half-back line attacked the ball at little bit better – I think we gave Galway too much space in the first half. I think we got to grips with that,” said Tipperary manager Michael Ryan.
“I thought certainly our half-back line, that middle third – half back line, midfield and half forward line – worked really hard in the second half and probably swung the game a little bit back towards us and allowed us to put the pressure on the Galway defence and the Galway goals.”
Seamie Callanan, the scorer of 3-9 in defeat this time last year, did not score from play but did begin to bring the likes of John ‘Bubbles’ O’Dwyer and John McGrath into the play – their goals proving to be the vital scores in a strange end-game that lacked the intensity of either Kilkenny-Waterford semi-final.
Galway’s style of play asks a lot of the men around the middle of the park – Míchéal Donoghue’s team are constantly rotating positions, which makes the life of a half-back that bit more difficult. You can’t always know exactly who you should be picking up, so you almost slip into a zonal system – Maher is a great man for hitting anything that moves in his zone.
The Canning collision is the one that sticks in the mind obviously, but there were others. Minutes after returning from having his own wounds tended to, Maher saw trouble developing at the Canal End.
Joseph Cooney had got away from his man and played a zippy ball straight into the paw of his namesake Conor on the other side of the goal. The St Thomas clubman planted his feet and prepared to fire a shot beyond a defenceless Gleeson in the Tipperary goal.
Except Gleeson wasn’t defenceless. His defence was just making a dramatic entrance, from the left wing-back position. Maher raced back just in time to get in a hook on Conor Cooney, sliding to his knees as he makes contact in a manner reminiscent of JJ Delaney’s heroic hook on Callanan back in 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1AehhXA6Uc
It was a phenomenal piece of defending from Maher, who is now facing into his fifth All-Ireland final (sixth if you count the 2014 replay) against Kilkenny. When he won one at the second time of asking, back in 2010, he could have been forgiven for thinking senior intercounty hurling was a land of milk and honey, where All-Irelands are won regularly.
The only hurling land of milk and honey is across the border in Kilkenny but Maher has won five Munster titles and earned three All-Stars in a career that has seen him played at centre half-back and full-back, but there is no question, at the age of 27, wing-back is where he belongs.
On the wing he can affect interceptions like the one early in the second half that led to John McGrath having a shot saved and Callanan scoring a 65. It also allows him the chance to win is aerial battles, like the catch he made late in the game above a gaggle of Galwegians. He was subsequently hooked, battled and won the ball back and got off a shot, which went wide.
He is a scrapper and a warrior – the kind of guy who will fling himself wholeheartedly, considerable body and honest soul, into a shoulder on Canning.
Joe Canning may be one of the most skilful hurlers in the country but he is also as strong as an ox. He was a long time getting off the ground after Maher hit him.
The clash of heads was accidental and forced both players off briefly to have their wounds seen to – Canning’s afternoon ending 10 minutes later, at half-time, after he suffered a hamstring injury.
Maher soldiered on, as he always does, and he will now look forward to yet another date with Kilkenny. He will know what to expect, they will know what to expect and we will all know what to expect.
Kilkenny will be favourites but with battlers like Maher on their side Tipperary will always have a fighting chance.
