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“I remember coming off the pitch against Tipperary thinking ‘what was it all for?'”
Aidan Walsh had just lost an All-Ireland semi-final to Tipperary, 13 days after he’d lost an All-Ireland quarter to Mayo. He’d played in two Munster finals, winning one and losing another a couple of months earlier.
The dual dream was a mad one.
The Kanturk man is one of the last GAA players to have tried his hand at it, and 2014 was the year he did it. Nine years on, he looks back on that season as a ‘bitter-sweet’ one.
Having won an All-Ireland football title with Cork in 2010, at the age of 20, Walsh stayed solely with the footballers for the next three years, winning two All-Stars and a Young Footballer of the Year.
He wonders now if he’d have been better off staying there.
But when the call came from Jimmy Barry Murphy at the start of that 2014 season, the man on the other end of the line was someone that he just couldn’t refuse.
“I’d go through a wall for the man,” says Walsh.
“I even remember when the phone rang at the start, it was like ‘hi Aidan, this is Jimmy Barry Murphy here,’ I was just like ‘wow.’ He has that aura about him. When he talks you listen. I couldn’t say no to him.
From Barry Murphy’s perspective, it made a lot of sense. He was a dual player himself and, having lost the All-Ireland hurling final to Clare the year before, Walsh looked like he could have been the man to give them that extra push.
“It was all lovely to call yourself a dual player,” Walsh reflects now, in an exclusive GAA Hour episode, “and to play hurling and football for Cork but, if I had my time again, would I have stayed with the footballers that time, maybe,” he says.
“I was midfield on both teams and by the end of it, I was absolutely spent.”
Which brings us to that hurling semi-final. Cork were well beaten, losing to Tipperary by 2-18 to 1-11 and Walsh was taken off with fifteen minutes to go. It was on the way off the pitch when he aplogised to Jimmy Barry Murphy.
“The Tipperary game, the All-Ireland semi-final – we had played Mayo with the footballers a week or two before as well.
“My body just started shutting down. And you’re trying your best to push as hard as you could but no matter how much nutrition, by the end of that year, it just all caught up.
“Jimmy always had so much faith in me, and he was so sound and do you know, he took a risk by starting me.
“Whatever he wanted me to do, I’d have done it. Such a nice man too, and such a legend too. So I was so disappointed not to perform to my abilities on the day.
“All I could say was sorry, because the game was gone. He’d put so much faith in me and I just didn’t reward him, because of the opportunity he gave me.”
Walsh says the whole year was a struggle, and he uses his experience to advise his younger brother Tommy, a dual player who currently plays for the Cork footballers.
“I remember the Thursday before the football, I was driving in the car to training, and I remember just thinking to myself, this is going to be so tough, trying to get through it. To be number nine on both teams, it was going to be so hard, playing some of the best midfielders in the country.
“They’re so difficult to get into them Munster finals, but I was just floating away at the time. It was unbelievable that I got the Munster medal, but it was bittersweet because I remember coming off the pitch against Tipperary thinking ‘what was it all for?’ ending up with nothing, because we were beaten by Mayo too.
“You have to be selfish, even with my brother Tommy, I definitely try to influence him with his decision making, because he’s similar, he’s a good footballer, but he’s a good hurler as well.
“He played underage hurling all the way up, but I made sure to tell him that ‘you just pick one now, and focus on that, and don’t do what I did,’ because it was all lovely to call yourself a dual player, and to play hurling and football for Cork, but if I had my time again, would I have stayed at the football – maybe.”
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Related links:
- Ice baths every morning, uddermint, and the other things that keep Aidan Walsh playing dual
- “He looked disinterested” – Colm Cooper critical of Shane Walsh performance
- Padraic Joyce hooks Shane Walsh as Galway cruise past Sligo
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