Brendan Maher has today called time on a glittering intercounty career. The Borris-Ileigh club man won three All-Ireland titles with Tipperary and three All-Star awards in an outstanding career. The announcement was perhaps not a surprise, with Maher seen as the most likely of the Tipp old guard to call it a day after this season, but yet the hurling world has reacted with some wonderful tributes to one of the more underrated players in the game.
Brendan Maher Retirement Announcement - https://t.co/daKmyf5JFB pic.twitter.com/In9PxScRn6
— Tipperary GAA (@TipperaryGAA) August 12, 2021
After 13 years playing with Tipperary, I have decided that now is the right time to announce my retirement from inter-county hurling. It was a huge honour and privilege for me to wear the Tipperary jersey and I am very grateful to have played with so many top-class players and to have enjoyed many successes with them. The inter-county game requires very significant commitment, and I am happy that I can look back on my career with no regrets having given everything that I could during my time with Tipperary.
Maher played in midfield for Tipperary, as well as all over the back line. On occasion, he even stepped into the forwards. His versatility was a huge strength of his game, but he excelled in all positions. Breaking into the Tipp team in 2009, he was one of the famous group of five Under 21s, along with Padraic Maher, Bonner Maher, Noel McGrath and Michael Cahill, that started the 2010 All-Ireland final, the day that Tipperary ended Kilkenny's five-in-a-row dreams. On the day, Maher's namesake Padraic got many of the national plaudits, alongside Lar Corbett, but Brendan was another star of the game, putting in a colossal performance in midfield.
He would go on to win another All-Ireland title in 2016, captaining the team, and would win five Munster titles in his career. It was the All-Ireland win in 2019 that really summed up the type of player and man Brendan Maher was.
In 2018, in the final game of the first Munster Championship round robin series, Maher tore his cruciate against Clare in Thurles. It was a disastrous day for Tipp with a late Clare goal also knocking them out of the Championship. 14 months later, he was on the steps of the Hogan Stand picking up the Liam MacCarthy for a third time.
But this was no feelgood moment for the Tipp fans. Maher, at 30, had clawed his way back to more than just the panel. He was, if anything, now even more crucial to the team than before. Having lined out at wing back in the final, he put the great TJ Reid in his pocket. That year he picked up his third All-Star award.
Straight after the game, we recorded a reaction podcast to the final, and a snippet of our conversation reveals the kind of impact Maher had on the game and the season.
Mick: Brendan Maher has been the outstanding wing-back of the championship.
Mark: When you look at the trouble Limerick had with TJ Reid, and what to do with him, and look at how well Brendan Maher played today, he [Reid] wasn't an issue at all. Maher was influential for Tipperary as Reid was Kilkenny.
PJ: One notable thing is that a year ago he tore his cruciate ligament in the final game of the Munster Championship against Clare.
I was at a media event earlier this year and Seamus Callanan said 'Brendan Maher is back, he's better than ever' and you think, 'Ah yeah, that's nice, it's just something teammates say about each other'. But he is back and better than ever - it's incredible what he's done. He's been one of Tipp's most important players in an All-Ireland final win. He did some great man-marking jobs this year.
Mick: I think Brendan Maher is going to go down as one of the best players of all-time. One of the reasons is he can do absolutely everything.
You could see him, at 34, spending a year at 14 for Tipperary.
He's a brilliant hurler, a brilliant up and down midfielder. He's done man-marking jobs where you put him on the opposition's best player and he'll keep them quiet.
For me, he's the complete, all-round hurler.
Maher later spoke to us about his comeback from injury and facing into dark times, unsure if he would be the same again.
I always believed I could get back, but in saying that I’d be lying if I said there weren’t times when you’d have doubts in your head.
You’d have some tough days. I stuck to the recovery process – there would be times when you were making good progress but then there would be days when the knee would get sore, and you’d find yourself thinking ‘the week before it was better than it is now'. So you’d end up and wondering what’s wrong. So you’d have doubts every so often.
I found training on my own a major struggle. When you are away from the group and training alone, I found it hard. There were some sessions where I wouldn’t finish them. When you don’t finish a session and you feel shit.
Mentally that was very difficult, there was about a two-week period where that was happening, so I decided I had to do something.
I rang our physio Paddy O’Brien and told him I was struggling with training on my own. I asked him if he would supervise my sessions, just to have somebody there and he then suggested training with Seamie [Callanan], who was coming back from a bad injury. So we trained away together in a local gym and that was a major help for me.
By March, Maher was ready to go. He was brought on in a League quarter-final against Dublin was the place went nuts. He had missed just nine months of action.
By August, he was an All-Ireland Champion. By October, he was an All-Star again. By November, he was a county champion with Boris-Ileigh, their first title in 33 years, and by the end of November, he a Munster club champion.
The fun spilled into 2020 with Maher scoring one of the most famous scores of all time in Borris' All-Ireland semi-final win over St. Thomas'. In the end though, Ballyhale, as they so often do, proved one obstacle too many in a legendary season.
Brendan Maher can do it all! Watch this score he gets with a broken hurley from a tight angle!! pic.twitter.com/oldCSx50KJ
— The GAA (@officialgaa) January 5, 2020
From the agony on the ground in Semple Stadium to the joy and adrenaline of the greatest hurling year of his life, what Brendan Maher did in 2019 said everything about the man and hurler you'll read so many tributes for today.
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