For the fifth time in the past six seasons Tipperary face into the new Allianz Hurling League season looking to bounce back after championship defeat by Kilkenny. On Sunday the All-Ireland finalists will be in Parnell Park to commence another season looking to win a first piece of national silverware in six years.

Captain Brendan Maher is familiar with this dispiriting repetition, having played in every one of those championship defeats from the first match in the sequence – the 2009 All-Ireland final. Last year the agony was prolonged by the final going to a replay after a drawn match that Tipp might have won in the last seconds.

“It’s probably something that will go with you for the rest of your life if I am being honest,” he says. “But as a player you have to look at each year as it is and 2015 is a new year for us and we are looking forward to games we have coming up.

Different passages

“I wouldn’t be one for looking back on games too much. I’d look at them if I was trying to analyse certain things or see how I was playing or what I should be doing different and as a group we would do the same thing and look at different passages of play and things we did well, things we did wrong and what we need to improve.”

This weekend’s match against Dublin recalls the same fixture 10 months ago when the counties fought over who would face a relegation play-off, a fate Tipp avoided thanks to their opponents just failing to lose by two points rather than three.

“It was a do-or-die game and we won and contested the league final and were very disappointed not to win it. You can go away from different games or years and say, ‘if this happened or that happened,’ - it was just the situation we were in. We had a run of three defeats and we had a challenge of playing Dublin and had to win that game and lucky enough we did win it.”

Barrage of criticism

The late flourish in the league helped to salvage a season that began with just one win in the first four matches, a record that triggered a barrage of criticism for the team in the county, which puzzled Maher.

“Our motivation and commitment levels are the same every year. You are 100 per cent committed and anyone who questions a GAA player’s commitment doesn’t really know what they are talking about. It’s an amateur sport and people sacrifice their lives to play the sport they love. Anyone who steps out on that field: to question their commitment – why would they be going out there?

“No one goes out to lose a game and, unfortunately, in sport there has to be a winner and loser, something you have to deal with but to be honest it would frustrate me a bit when I hear people giving out about certain players, almost like accusing them of certain things as a person, nearly as much as a player and you are judged on the field nearly as a person by the way you perform.

“It would frustrate you but it is all part of it and human nature to criticise ... Look, we just have to deal with it; it is the nature of the beast at the moment.”

Maher’s career has been characterised by versatility. His senior career began at wing back, moved to centrefield where he won an All Star in Tipperary’s All-Ireland-winning season in 2010 and more recently returned to wing back and another All Star last year.

A skilful hurler, his creativity has been somewhat sacrificed by playing in a deep-lying defensive role and, of late, manager Eamon O’Shea has been deploying his captain in the attack, at centre forward.

“I am well used to it. I have been moved around quite a lot over the years, so I’m used to playing in different positions. I have played centre forward quite a bit for Borrisoleigh, so it is not really new territory – it is new territory in Tipp but not really for myself.”

Even if last year ended in the usual defeat by Kilkenny, Maher acknowledges that qualitatively it was different, an improvement on the previous couple of years when the county appeared to be sliding away from the promise of the 2010 All-Ireland and its attendant high hopes for a young team.

“Yeah, I suppose. You can’t just look at last year and say, ‘I’m 100 per cent disappointed’. It was a bit of a roller coaster.

“What I am looking at is an experience – not just as a player but it was an amazing life experience to go through all the emotions and be able to come through an awful lot of obstacles and lot of challenges and then have the experience of paying in an All-Ireland again and experience the whole euphoria that comes with that.

“But I’m not a person that will dwell on the past too much. I always try and look forward and try to be as positive as possible.”