Unreasonable as it may seem to declare Noel McGrath the seasoned veteran of Tipperary hurling, his career statistics certainly don’t lie.
At age 32 he’s now well into his 15th consecutive senior season, McGrath winning three All-Irelands and four Munster titles and, while his still youthful looks might deny it, time is running out to win a whole lot more.
Tipperary not making this year’s Munster hurling final, missing out on the last day after losing to Waterford, was another reminder of that, although the journey back so some success begins again – Offaly up first in Saturday’s All-Ireland preliminary quarter-final in Tullamore
“It was disappointing, an opportunity to get into a Munster final, which as a player you want to play in the big days,” says McGrath. “But any day you go out and you’re not on, you get beaten and that’s what happened on the day. Waterford were the better team.
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“After a day or two, you just gather yourself again and you realise you’re still in the championship. You just have to knuckle down and go again. That’s what we’ve been doing over the last few weeks. If you stay dwelling on it for too long, you get stuck in it. You just have to move on and get going again.”
Get past Offaly and the beaten Leinster finalists, Galway, are up next. Tipp certainly found some form this summer – beating Clare, and drawing with Limerick and Cork – and McGrath is still confident they can find that form again. They’ve no choice at this stage anyway.
“After any defeat, you’ve to ask the hard questions of yourself, first of all, and then of the team. That’s all part of sport. It’s nothing I haven’t been involved in before. It’s happened at club and inter-county level before. It’ll probably happen again to not just Tipp but other teams. It’s just how you bounce back from it then after that.”
They haven’t played Offaly in the championship since 2014, winning an All-Ireland qualifier that year. Tipp’s last All-Ireland win, in 2019, also came through the qualifier route, after losing the Munster final to Limerick, and that gives McGrath some lasting confidence.
“I suppose at this stage of my career, you don’t know what your last match could be . . . And you’re enjoying every minute of it because this is what I grew up wanting to do, to play hurling for Tipperary and play in big games like that. When you’ve all the work done early in the year, you just want to get it all out now in the championship.
“That’s why you train, to play in the championship matches. I love it. I’m enjoying the buzz of the new players coming in and pushing us all on and giving us that freshness to go again, like every year that you come back. Hopefully I’ll stay at it for as long as I’m wanted and as long as I’m able to, so we’ll see, whatever that is.”
Their final outing in Munster wasn’t helped by a growing injury list, Jason Forde among them, although they’ll be back close to the full pack on Saturday.
“No matter what team you are in any sport in the world, you need your full complement of players and then the management will pick from that. You want to have everybody back and give everybody a chance to play.
“But at different stages of the year, different teams have picked up injuries. We’ve been no different to anyone else. You want everyone available that you possibly can so hopefully we’ll have a good few bodies back for this weekend.”
As for some of the non-seasoned veterans, McGrath has high praise for Bryan O’Mara: “He’s just a great fella, he’s very dedicated, there’s no other way of putting it. He’s very tuned in on and off the field and a really nice fella. His hurling then talks for itself, so he can go as far as he wants to go.”
