From the beginning of his still young hurling life, Walter Walsh has been the square peg around whom managers have decided to reshape round holes. Virtually unique among the current generation of Kilkenny hurlers, he was never involved in any of the county panels at under-14 or under-16. He never played Féile. He didn't even go to a Kilkenny school.
He hurled for a junior club but if you’d asked him at 15 what sports he played, chances are rugby would have escaped his lips before hurling. He was in training camps and development squads with Leinster rugby, played some tennis. He even played Gaelic football on and off. Freak show stuff.
Richie Mulrooney can recall the point at which all of this changed for young Walter. In May 2008, Mulrooney was over the Kilkenny minors and with Wexford coming up in the Leinster Championship, he knew his panel was a bit short on, well, something. Something a bit different. So he went up to Dr Morris Park beside Semple Stadium one night to watch the Kilkenny under-17s play Tipp.
He knew of Walter Walsh. Walsh had been in with the minors that January and February when they were running trial games but he was still only 16 and was every bit as raw as a gangly 16-year-old whose first sport was rugby should be.
But that night in Thurles, still about a week short of his 17th birthday, Walsh was devastating. He alternated between full-forward and centre-forward – a wrecking ball choosing his own sphere of destruction as and when it suited him. That night on the way home, Mulrooney rang him and invited him onto the minor panel.
“The following week,” remembers Mulrooney, “the very first night I met him at training, he told me that he was very interested in rugby. I just said, ‘Right’. I never said it was a good or a bad thing, just said, ‘Right’, and left it at that.
“He must have said it to somebody when he went home! Because two nights later at training he came over to me before we got started. ‘Richie,’ he says, ‘rugby wouldn’t be an issue now if I was to go well at the hurling.’ I imagine that somebody at home put him in the right direction in between those first two training sessions.”
Minor finals
Over the course of the following four years, the fate of Mulrooney’s teams was invariably tied up in some fashion or other with Walsh. They went to two All
Ireland
minor finals together, winning one and losing one.
Walsh played three years at under-21, with Kilkenny reaching an All-Ireland final in the last of them. And of course it was that campaign, in the summer of 2012, that earned him extra attention.
The parallels between Mulrooney in 2008 and Brian Cody in 2012 are inescapable. Heading for the All Ireland final replay, Cody's attack was crying out for something different. In two games against Galway only Henry Shefflin had held his end up, with their starting forwards worth just 2-3 and 0-8 in the Leinster and All-Ireland finals.
When it came time to find a better way, Mulrooney wasn’t shocked that Cody sent for Walter. Nor that despite being 6ft4in and 15 stone and walking in the parade with the number 14 on his back, he was sent to the corner where the Canal End meets the Hogan Stand.
“I just felt that in the under-21 semi-final against Galway and the final against Clare, he had been so difficult to play against. Even though top of the right might be a strange enough position for a big man, as soon as Walter gets the ball he is very difficult to stop.
“His power and pace when he gets the ball in his hand is huge and, it might sound simple, but he runs in a direct line towards the goal. The stereotypical corner-forward is small and knacky and for that game, this was something so different to what people expected.
"This was Kilkenny's plan that day. If you go back and look at the first half of that All-Ireland final replay, every single delivery from the Kilkenny players when they could was directed towards the corner where Walter and Johnny Coen were. And Walter's performance justified everything. Picking him in the first place and then using him the way they did."
Bold move
Even now it still seems such a bold move by Cody. It was Walsh’s senior debut. He hadn’t played league, he hadn’t hurled
Walsh Cup
. Outside of
Cillian Buckley
, the only other member of the Kilkenny 15 he’d even played with before was
Paul Murphy
. No matter.
“As regards the temperament to receive that news, Walter would be the perfect guy,” says Mulrooney. “He’s calm. He doesn’t get too excited. He’s laid back. And at the same time, he’s terribly honest in everything he does. He was just going to go about his business like it was an ordinary Sunday morning rather than get hyped up about 80,000 looking at him.”
In the season and a half since, Walsh has slowly found his feet. The spring immediately following that All-Ireland was interrupted by tendonitis in both knees and a ligament injury to his elbow. His best game in last year’s championship was during the draw against Dublin but otherwise he was pretty anonymous. Like plenty of the Kilkenny panel, his season never really got off the ground.
He prospered in this year's league, however, predominantly at wing-forward. Along with Buckley, Colin Fennelly and Pádraig Walsh, he was one of Kilkenny's successes of the spring. Only he and Pádraig Walsh played in all of Kilkenny's matches and only Fennelly scored more from play. In as much as anybody can in a Brian Cody world, he looks a fixture in the attack for now at least.
“No doubt he can play any of the six positions,” says Mulrooney. “My own thought on it is that he’s best at 13. He just brings a different challenge there than most corner backs are used to.
“Walter’s now 23 and if you look at the players around him, you have Richie Hogan, Colin Fennelly and TJ Reid who are all a couple of years older. Cody needs those four and others of that age group to really stand up now and bring the thing on . . . . People would be quite worried in general that Kilkenny are not producing great minor teams but as long as you’re producing one or two players to come through, you can keep the circle continuing.”
No matter where you find them. Or how, come to that.
