It was the redemption song of the summer. John McGrath, without a championship start for two years, finally got his chance in Tipperary’s opening match against Limerick. The season ended with an All-Ireland.
This wasn’t a triumph of perseverance for a determined underdog. McGrath’s first act came in the latter years of the previous decade and yielded an All Star in his 2016 breakthrough season and two All-Ireland medals.
The first half of this decade was, until this summer, a fitful narrative of not quite firing properly, an undermining Achilles tendon injury and marathon, dual club campaigns with Loughmore-Castleiney. Yet for most of the hiatus, he was widely regarded as the best club hurler in the county.
Subtext: his first All-Ireland came on a drizzly afternoon in 2011 when he lined out at centre forward for the Tipp minor footballers in their sensational takedown of a Dublin cohort, many of whom would go on to feature in the record-breaking senior team later in the decade.
RM Block
Even during a media conference to announce his selection as the PwC GAA/GPA Hurler of the Month award for July, the first question concerns how his return to football went, as Loughmore began their perennial trek down two tracks in the age of the FRC.
“Yeah, I thought it was going to be more complicated to get used to. But I suppose after having seen a decent few games, it’s nearly the normal now. A few times I had to be running back wondering are you supposed to cross the halfway line, or have we enough lads up or down,” McGrath says.
“You pick it up quick enough, it was good now. Enjoyable.”
Not that anybody on the call was going to dwell on football.
McGrath’s hurling resurgence began in Thurles against Limerick last April. A scattered few appearances in the league didn’t sound any trumpets about the likelihood of his first start in Munster since the opening day in 2023.
To what did he ascribe the belated call-up? Did he see selection as reward for form?
“Maybe a little bit, I suppose, but I probably was frustrated as well having not seen game time in our last two league games. So, you’re not really sure maybe where you are or that, but when Liam Cahill (manager) came to me and said that they were going to put me in, I probably put a huge emphasis on that game then for myself.
“I probably made it out in my own head to be a lot bigger than the first round of a Munster championship. Maybe that was just what I needed at the time and I got an opportunity maybe for any frustration I had built up, to let it off and release it.”
Down went the marker. He worked like a maniac, hooking Cian Lynch at one stage in Tipp’s defence. But back in his own lane, he finished the match with 2-1 – the goals as precise and predatory as any in his pomp.
On he went. In the remarkable destruction of favourites Cork in the All-Ireland final, McGrath again contributed two goals in his haul of 2-2, and was fouled for the penalty that provided Darragh McCarthy with the third – to go with the one he scored against Kilkenny in the semi-final match.
It was some completion of Tipperary’s rebound from two heavy defeats by Cork in the league final and Munster championship.
In all, he shot seven goals in the championship in a campaign that has catapulted him into contention for Hurler of the Year.
He is at a loss to explain Tipperary’s dynamiting of Cork’s six-point lead in a second half they won by 3-14 to 0-2.
“It’s hard to say that anyone saw the second half coming in the manner it did ... but we took huge belief from that first half. The goal was a right sucker punch going in at half-time [but] we still felt we were really in the game. It’s funny that you say it was quite a calm dressingroom – for a minute, I was nearly thinking, this is a bit too calm,” he says.
“I went over to one of the lads and said we need to kind of liven up here a little bit. But it’s a credit to the lads that they were able to just stay that relaxed and focused and bring what came in the second half.
“I think the last words that Liam said before we went out – he said he was waiting for this. This is where he wanted to be all year. This is what he had visualised and he just said, ‘go out and win the All-Ireland’. A lot of stuff after that is a blur. It was just a mad 35 minutes.”
Mad season. Mad comeback – collective and personal.
