Bill Maher optimistic ahead of league opener

The Tipperary footballers get their division four league campaign off and running this weekend and the talismanic Bill Maher will be a big player for the Premier in their aspirations for success this season.

Speaking ahead of their league opener to Waterford this weekend, Maher and the rest of the panel are raring to go and the short turnaround has been strange, with the new season format kicking into action.

“It’s been a strange pre-season but it has come around quickly,” Maher admitted.
“We’ve been playing a lot of challenge matches along with the McGrath Cup games as well. I think it suits the player and we’re all happy with it so it’s been good.”

The shortened pre-season slog will no doubt be welcomed by the players, but Maher says that fitness won’t be an issue with most players being kept busy with college commitments.

“I think we’re in decent shape at the moment. There’s little areas and aspects where we can still improve but I suppose a lot of the lads on the squad were playing club championship up until the middle of November and lads wouldn’t have had much time to lose the match fitness by the time they were back training again.

And there’s loads of lads playing college games between Fitzgibbon and Sigerson as well.”

Maher turned 28 in the last week, and with the likes of Michael Quinlivan and Brian Fox not on the panel for the coming year, Maher is one of the more experienced heads around the squad but he thinks there is a core group of players there that can help filter through the younger players.

“Myself and Evan Comerford were only talking about it the other day,” Maher quipped.

“We noticed that we were nearly top of the line in the age group. I think all the players who have more years on the panel than the new lads are trying to help the younger lads, but from what I’ve seen so far they’re well equipped to push the team on themselves.

“So it’s not a case of one person taking it all on their own shoulders, it’s a group and a panel effort.

“It’s strange with the few lads missing from the dressing room, they were all big personalities on and off the field. But the young lads coming in have integrated seamlessly in fairness. We’ve gelled fairly quickly and we’d all know each other from the club football anyway so it hasn’t been too difficult.

This will be the first proper year of the split season where things will be back to some kind of normality with matches more likely to be unscathed from covid, along with full crowds back at stadiums, and Maher is delighted with the prospect of the 2022 split season.

“The new structures are going to be very beneficial for players in my opinion. I feel a lot fresher this year already than I have in previous years.

“Our club championship finished around the start of November when we got to the county intermediate final and I only came back into training on the 28th of December so I had a month off and after that time you’d be itching to get back out on the field again.

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“We haven’t seen the full impact of the split season yet, we’ll only really know after the next few years, but based on last year I think it benefits everyone.

After the staggering success of the Munster final win in 2022, last year was an extremely steep fall back to reality for the Tipperary footballers, having being relegated to many pundit’s surprise to division four, which was followed by defeat to Kerry in Munster.

“We’ve only ourselves to blame for being in division four,'' Maher said reflecting on 2021.

“It was the results that got us there so it’s not like we’re there by default. If you look at the bottom teams from division 4 up to maybe the bottom teams in division 2 I think that everyone would fancy their chances playing each other.

“So there’s probably not that much in the difference between those teams. The teams we’ll be playing are still strong on their day and we’ll be pushing very hard to get out of it because we do feel that we’re a division or two above where we are, but our results haven’t backed that up and that’s our motivation going into the league.

“The best way to show that you’re a good team is by winning matches at the end of the day.”

The mood of players fluctuates based on results really. Obviously it was a big high at the end of 2020 and we had such a short turn around into 2021, it just felt like an elongated championship so it was all a bit of a roller-coaster in those eight months.

“But in the meantime, a lot of players have gone back to their clubs and, whether they’ve been successful or not, really the intercounty results are erased until we’re all back training. Everyone was happy to be coming back for this year.

“We didn't really have much time to dwell on last year, with lads looking to earn their place and matches coming up. 2020 is a distant memory for us now.”

“We spoke as a group after training last night. Our real focus as a group is to beat Waterford at the weekend. It’s probably what you hear from every player in any interview, but we’re really training to hone in on the next game because us getting promoted starts with beating Waterford,” he finished.

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