FEATURE: The Tipperary man who ripped apart a hurling institution on his debut

Very few players can claim to have bested current Clare manager Brian Lohan in a championship game.

The Wolfe Tones hurler is regarded as one of the best full backs to have ever graced the game and had an illustrious career spanning 13 seasons, winning three Munster titles, two All-Ireland titles and four All Star awards and is seen as a legend of the game.

However, on a wet and wintery summers day in the Gaelic Grounds, Limerick in 2005, it was a man on his full championship debut who stole the show in a Munster semi-final between Tipperary and Clare and more or less won the game for the Premier in a 12 minute spell at the start of the game, and in doing so ended the aura of invincibility of a massive figure in the game.

Making a first championship start for your county at the ripe old age of 27 is certainly a rarity, but that’s exactly what happened that day when Micheal Webster bounded into position ahead of throw-in that day after throwing his lot in with Ken Hogan’s hurlers early in the year.

“Whatever about football, I never liked playing hurling in the rain. I wouldn’t have been the most skillful of hurlers,” Webster said with a laugh as he recalled that infamous day.

“I remember doing the warm up that day and just telling myself, ‘this is going to be your day’.

“Every ball was sticking and my touch was just in and I remember going into the dressing room before the match started and thinking to myself that I was really in the zone.

“It was one of those days where you felt that everything was going to go well,” he recalled.

At the time the year 2005 was a big one for Webster because, as well as being called into the senior hurling panel, the Loughmore Castleiney man was named captain of Seamus McCarthy’s senior football team and he was ready and willing to throw his hat into both rings for the year, but fate had other plans

“I was with the Tipp footballers the previous year and we had won the football county final in 2004 which made me the Tipp captain the following year. But I just felt I wasn’t getting a fair crack on that team, because I was willing to play both codes.

“Speaking to Ken Hogan, he was very happy with the way I was going inside so I decided to just throw my lot in with the hurling.”

Tipperary had a mixed league campaign in Division 1B of the National Hurling League that year and Webster recalled how he was eager to make an impact and it was a game against Down in Semple Stadium which gave him confidence and belief he could make the grade, even in a team which played poorly on the day.

“It was a shaky enough start to that game,” he recalled.

“I think we went in at half time just a point up or something like that and it was a bad display. I was a bit disgusted with that given it was my first start and I actually said it to a few lads including myself that we have to take the chance here.

“And in fairness, it went much better when we went out in the second half. I scored a goal and set up a few goals and I suppose that was the start of it for me, just to get that bit of confidence going into the rest of the year.

“We had a bit of a transition from ‘01 in the panel, with a lot of that team retiring and a lot of new lads coming in, along with Ken Hogan in his first year as well,” he added.

Despite impressing in a few games Webster was named on the bench for the drawn game and replay against Limerick in the Munster quarter-final, his chances curtailed by injury at the end of the league campaign, but he did feature off the bench in the replay and he found the atmosphere and occasion daunting.

“I came on in the second game alright. I suppose it was a bit daunting looking back on it. It was my first championship game and it did take me a while to settle in but I suppose it was only after winning the Limerick match that we got that confidence going into the Clare game.”

Not many would have had Webster as a starter heading into that game, let alone making the impact he did, but he was a man who was tearing it up in training leading up to the Clare game and it prompted Ken Hogan to launch him into the starting team for the semi-final.

“I was going well in fairness. We would have been playing club matches around that time as well and I had been going well in those games.

“He (Ken) would have said to just do what I was good at, win the ball and play to my strengths; be really physical and lay down a marker from the start.

“I couldn’t just go out there and admire a great player like Brian Lohan. Anything else wasn’t going to work and to be honest I always liked that kind of challenge and it didn’t come as big as that at the time.

“I knew what I had to and I knew if I could create havoc around the square that the likes of Eoin Kelly and Lar Corbett could do the damage.”
And it really showed on the day as Webster seemed to get under the skin of the current Clare senior manager, winning all sorts of possession and vexing his opponent at every opportunity and that was essential to try and get the better of him.

“You know yourself, at the end of the day if he thinks he can’t break you down mentally you have a good start made so that’s how I approached it,” he said with a wry smile.

“You can be physically strong but you have to have it mentally strong and you have to show players that you have won so much in the game that you’re not afraid of them.

“I grew up watching Clare and Tipperary playing big games in the 90’s and you knew the big names that they had in the team.

“Once the game started I really got into it quickly and set up Lar for his goal and that was a huge confidence booster straightaway and it really set the tone of the game for me.

“And it was Larry who gave me the pass for the second goal a few minutes later and after that few minutes I wanted to win every ball because I felt that the shackles were off then. It made it a lot easier,” he remarked.

He got man of the match in that game and his name came swiftly into focus in the intercounty hurling landscape after besting Brian Lohan in a big Munster championship match.

Such was his performance in the day, one national paper was full of praise for the Loughmore man’s effort when they said,

“They also unearthed a new hero in Michael Webster who ripped apart the great institution of modern day hurling that is Brian Lohan, setting up the first Tipp goal for Larry Corbett and poaching the second himself to build a cushion Clare didn't have the class to breach.”

Praise doesn’t come much higher than that and Webster reminisced about the aftermath of the game and playing so well in his full championship debut.

“It was a huge day for me. I got man of the match that day and it was a big day for my family and my club.

“I remember seeing my parents after the match, and my brothers and sisters and it was incredibly special, getting into a Munster final so early in my career so I have really great memories of that day.”

Now based in Limerick with his family, Webster still maintains big support for the Tipperary hurlers and he will be in the crowd come Sunday afternoon, and he was quick to turn attention from his own exploits to speak about Tipperary’s upturn in performance in recent months.

“I’m absolutely thrilled with them. I would have expected at the start of the year that a few lads would have retired, the likes of Bonner (Maher) you would have thought that he was tiring in the last few years.

“But the break obviously did him the world of good and he’s come back with a huge lease of life.

“Liam (Cahill) has done a great job in such a short space of time and I think it’s like when Liam Sheedy came in with us back in 2008, the players involved have really responded to him.

“It’ll be a tough environment down there (Ennis) and it’ll be tough to get a win but if they could get that win it would be huge for the players and I’m very confident that they can do it,” he finished.