Tommy Walsh: ‘Tipperary putting Lar Corbett out on me in 2012... was a massive mistake’

Tommy Walsh has spoken openly for the first time about the difficulty he experienced in being dropped by Brian Cody in 2014.

Tommy Walsh: ‘Tipperary putting Lar Corbett out on me in 2012... was a massive mistake’

Tommy Walsh has spoken openly for the first time about the difficulty he experienced in being dropped by Brian Cody in 2014, writes John Fogarty.

The nine-time All Star, who retired from Kilkenny at the end of the season at the relatively young age of 31, felt the writing was on the wall earlier that season when he wasn’t started in league games.

What softened the blow was that his right half-back berth was later handed to his younger brother Pádraig but Walsh doesn’t hide his disappointment in tonight’s Laochra Gael on TG4.

“For the previous 11 years, once I was fit Brian Cody always picked me. Then in the first few league matches I wasn’t starting so I knew straight away they were going to be trying out different things this year. I was training from November to May that year and played something like two or three matches so I was very frustrated.

“It was very hard being dropped but the one thing that was making up for it was Pádraig was playing instead of me. You’re always hoping the best for him.”

Walsh’s love of playing is manifest throughout the programme. He admits to hiding an illness from Cody to ensure he started the 2007 All-Ireland final win over Limerick.

“Before the match, for whatever reason, I wasn’t able to sleep and it felt like I had a flu. I remember we had our pre-match meal in the Crowne Plaza (hotel) a few hours before the game and I’ll never forget after the meal I slipped off to the toilets and I lied down on the floor and went for a little sleep for an hour.

“I obviously couldn’t tell Brian Cody because if I told him I probably wouldn’t be playing the match. There is one thing worse than losing and that’s not playing and nothing was going to stop me playing in that final.”

Walsh remembers the infamous 2012 All-Ireland semi-final when Lar Corbett tracked him around the field despite being marked by Jackie Tyrrell.

“I was marking Pa Bourke and I was obviously following him and Lar was following myself trying to stop me hurling and it was just a massive mistake, I felt, for Tipperary. He couldn’t get on the ball with the tactics that Tipperary was employing so it was frustrating but there were no real verbals. The only verbals that were going on were between me and Jackie. He just kept telling me to look at the scoreboard and forget about it.

“They should have backed Lar Corbett that, whether it was Jackie Tyrrell marking, whether it was JJ (Delaney), whether it was Paul Murphy, he would bring them into the edge of the square, man-on-man, and took him on because Lar could destroy you in a second.”

He dismisses the idea that Kilkenny were distracted by the five-in-a-row hype prior to the 2010 final defeat to Tipperary. “I think we nearly had 10,000 at one of the training sessions before the final. It was the media felt that it was a distraction. It wasn’t a distraction, I felt. I felt we were having great preparation and we were training just as hard.”

Of the time he accidentally cut referee Brian Gavin’s nose in the 2011 All-Ireland final win over Tipp, Walsh recounts: “There was no one more shocked in Croke Park than I was when it happened. I couldn’t believe it; I was like, ‘What am I after doing?’

“I was trying to hide over in the corner. It was probably the worst five minutes I ever put in an All-Ireland final because I was dreading being sent to the line. Lucky enough, Brian just got on with the game.”

He lauds Cody for putting Kilkenny in the right mind-frame after drawing the 2012 All-Ireland final with Galway. “We felt like we had thrown it away. I’ll never forget Brian Cody brought us into a hotel room and just basically laid it on the line. And he said, ‘What have we to be disappointed about? We have to wait three weeks,’ he said.

“He said he would wait three months, three years to play in an All-Ireland final. And suddenly we went out of that room not how disappointed we were but how lucky we were that we were getting another chance to play in an All-Ireland final.”

This story first appeared in the Irish Examiner.

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