End of an Era

In All Fairness

Depending on who you listen to, there is nothing going on in the GAA at the moment.

There are still some out there that decry that if there is no inter-county to watch or talk about, the profile of the game is being damaged.

I think you will see in this week’s edition of this paper that the GAA is thriving at the moment, the vast majority of communities in Tipperary have some team in the business end of the championship in hurling, Gaelic Football, Ladies Football and camogie, and for all the hype that Tipperary brings, you can’t buy that level of engagement locally and is why the club season deserves its time to breath without the big brother inter-county game lingering in the shadows.

Yes, Tipperary’s marquee senior hurling team has a disappointing year, but it seems so far removed, as the club championships have soothed some of the soreness of the winless championship campaign, giving management, players, and supporters alike time to put it in the rearview mirror before refocusing on the 2025 campaign.

A sign that the new inter-county season is coming into view came this week with the retirement announcement of Patrick ‘Bonner’ Maher after sixteen years with the Tipperary senior hurlers.

There is a tendency for these announcements at this time of the year to come in bunches as managements begin to put a shape on their panels as players inform them as to their availability for another campaign, or players being let go but allowed to step away with their heads held high by retiring rather than the ignominy of being dropped after sterling service.

In this case, it isn’t the latter as it is a case of Bonner having nothing more to prove. He already did that coming back from two serious injuries in 2019 & 2021 and continue to set the tone in training with his work ethic.

He has gotten to step out on his own terms, unlike long-time colleague Padraic Maher who had that taken away from him when forced to retire unexpectedly in early 2022 through injury.

There’s no doubt that there was no more popular player among the supporters than ‘Bonner’ from the moment he broke into the senior team in 2010. They love their wristy and skilful hurlers, but they love their work-horses more and that is what ‘Bonner’ was.

He was a superb compliment to the likes of Eoin Kelly, Lar Corbett, Seamus Callanan, John O’Dwyer, Noel McGrath et al, and more as he generally got them the ball from which to work their magic.

However, the skill level of Patrick Maher is largely under appreciated. He is hugely skilful, the things he could do to kill a ball, high or low, and get it into his hands, there were few better in this regard. He was also a superb passer of the ball, be it long or short.

His temperament was superb. No matter the treatment he got off the ball, and he got at lot at club and county, he never rose to the bait.

The 2010 All-Ireland Final probably wouldn’t have been won without him as he kept Tommy Walsh, in his prime, in check.

2014 was probably his prime year with his performance in the drawn final with Kilkenny notable to the point where Brian Cody rejigged his defence for the replay to bring in Kieran Joyce specifically to man-mark the Lorrha man, and his ineffectiveness went along way to Kilkenny winning.

I’ll always remember him scoring Tipp’s 29th and final point of the 2016 final, as it perfectly encapsulated Bonner, as the game was in the bag, yet he caught the ball at its highest point, ran on and struck the ball over the bar. He didn’t even see the ball go over as he had already turned to run back into position. The perfect encapsulation of team before me!

For such a combative player, that he avoided injury for much of his career was remarkable, and it was cruel that it was non-contact injuries that curtailed him in recent years. The knee injury sustained against Limerick in 2019 was the cruellest of all as Bonner was in hurler of the year form after three games of that championship. The previous match against Clare was arguably his most complete in the blue and gold, to such an extent that I rarely give ten out of ten for a player in my match ratings, but he got one for that performance. Two weeks later, his season was over but his team-mates ensured he won a third All-Ireland medal to soften the blow.

When you reference hurling and Lorrha, Tony Reddin and Ken Hogan came to mind straight away for most people, and Patrick ‘Bonner’ Maher has added his name to that Mount Rushmore for whom communities can share in the glory of what inter-county teams achieve and why their importance cannot be diminished in the quest for greater inter-county profile.