All-Ireland winning captain Maher quizzed by young GAA fans at Portlaoise homecoming!

All-Ireland winning Tipperary captain and Laois Garda Ronan Maher faced some of his toughest questions of the year, but this time they didn’t come from Cork or Kilkenny.

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Instead, the questions came from the young hurling fans in the room during a special homecoming on Wednesday, August 13, at the Midlands Park Hotel in Portlaoise.

Joined by colleagues, family, fans, Laois sports hero Pat Critchley, and special guests, the Little Blue Heroes, the event celebrated the Laois Community Garda’s remarkable achievement of captaining Tipperary to All-Ireland glory and lifting the Liam MacCarthy Cup.

From where he keeps his medals to which opponent gave him the most trouble, Maher answered every question with a smile and a few stories along the way.

Q: Where are all your trophies kept?

A: My mother is very good at keeping all the trophies. The majority of them are Padraig’s; that's the only thing. They’re all in the front room in our house. There's a good collection of them there, but hopefully, we'll be looking for a few more to add to it as well.

Q: Who’s the toughest team you played against this year?

A: The toughest team would probably have been Cork. We played them in the league final and they hammered us, and then we went down in the second round in the Munster Championship, and they gave us a good beating that day as well.

That's why we were so prepared for the All-Ireland Final, and we had a plan in place, and we knew what way we were going to go after them, and we got the opportunity to do that on the right day, and that was the All-Ireland Final.

Probably didn't get to do it in the second round of the championship, but thankfully, we got on top of them when it mattered most. In fairness to Cork, they’re league champions and Munster champions, they’ve been brilliant this year, and there's no doubt they'll be back next year.

Q: Who was the toughest forward you played against this year?

A: TJ Reid, not just this year, but every year that we play him. He's probably the greatest hurler to have ever played the game. He's strong, he's athletic, and his hurling is very good, and he's unreal on frees, so he's definitely the toughest player I've ever marked. I'd say Cork would say the very same thing as well.

Q: When did you start playing hurling?

A: I started playing hurling in my grandfather's field when I was five or six. My uncle Maurice is there, and their home house, and we made a hurling field out of it. He welded up two goal posts, and all our cousins live on the one road, so there would have been eight, nine, ten of us there playing in our own All-Ireland Final, and that's where I started off.

Then I went into our juvenile club, Durlas Óg, where Paddy Moore, my uncle Paddy McCormack, trained us and plenty more. Then going into Scoil Ailbhe, training there, and up into the secondary school, Thurles CBS.

I would have started in my two grandmothers' houses, and like I said, we were lucky enough to have plenty of relations around on the one road. No one was ever stuck for a few pucks on the road, so yeah, that's where I started.

Q: If you could bring back any Tipperary player from the past, who would it be and why?

A: My brother, who had to retire early due to a neck injury, so we definitely would have got another two or three more years out of Padraig. I know I was lucky enough to go up on the wall in Thurles Sarsfields, but he was the one person in Tipperary that we always thought would be lifting the Liam MacCarthy.

He was a player who probably would have deserved it more than anybody. He could be like Noel McGrath, there still playing, so I think if I could bring back a player, I'd bring back my brother.

It makes it that bit more special when you’re playing alongside your brother as well. On days like that, when you’re going up to Croke Park to win All-Ireland Finals, it’s special. I was lucky enough to do it twice before that, so yeah, he was a great player for Tipperary, a great servant, so I'd probably bring him back.

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