In attendance at the launch of the Bord Gáis Energy GAA Legends Tour Series of Croke Park for 2025 is Kilkenny hurling star, Walter Walsh. After over a decade of partnership, the Bord Gáis Energy Legends Tour Series of Croke Park returns once again for 2025 and includes a star-studded line up of Gaelic Games players. For a full schedule of the Bord Gáis Energy GAA Legends Tour Series of Croke Park and details of how to book a place on a tour, visit crokepark.ie/legends. Booking is essential as the tours sell out quickly. Photo by David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile.
By John Harrington
In the canon of memorable senior inter-county hurling championship debuts, none can rival Walter Walsh’s for sheer drama and impact.
When he hosts his Bord Gáis Energy GAA Legends Tour in Croke Park on June 7, you can be sure one of the first questions he’ll be asked by those in attendance will be to reminisce about the 2012 All-Ireland Final replay.
Kilkenny had been somewhat fortunate to earn a second bite at the cherry in the drawn game with Galway, and manager Brian Cody clearly felt like he needed to try something a little bit different for the replay so he handed the then 21-year-old Walsh his championship debut at full-forward.
The rest is now All-Ireland Final history. The unheralded newcomer smashed the Galway defence like a wrecking ball to score 1-3 in a man of the match performance that inspired Kilkenny to a comfortable win.
No-one saw it coming, not even Walsh himself.
“Brian didn't tell me, it was just in the team meeting on Friday night beforehand (that I found out), that was it," says Walsh. "The team was named and sure everyone else in the room was as shocked as I was I'd say, that I was named.
“I had known that I was going well and that I'd had a decent campaign with the U-21s as well, I'd play well and we'd got beaten in the All-Ireland final by Clare that year. I knew I was playing well but I never thought I'd be even coming on, and definitely not starting.
“It was definitely surreal. It was mad. I suppose if someone did it now…it would be hard to think of now, I suppose, that a player could come in, join a panel at that stage and, look, if it never went to a replay it wouldn’t have happened either. I was on the bench from the quarter-final against Limerick in 2012 so I joined the panel just after that. Galway beat Kilkenny in the Leinster final.
“But I had been in training, making up numbers, I suppose, and I was with the under-21s. It was mad really. Yeah, it was. Getting man of the match.
“But, for me at the time, I was just delighted to play for Kilkenny and to play with your heroes, lads you look up to as you’re growing up and winning All-Irelands with them and yeah, it was mad really.”
Kilkenny's Walter Walsh,14, and Joe Brennan celebrate with the Liam MacCarthy Cup. GAA Hurling All-Ireland Senior Championship Final Replay, Kilkenny v Galway, Croke Park, Dublin. Picture credit: Matt Browne / SPORTSFILE.
Walsh is about as laid back a character as you could meet, but, not surprisingly, even he was unnerved by making his senior Kilkenny debut on the biggest stage of all.
“Yeah, I would have been, I was nervous about it,” he admits. “It just hit me when I came out on the field, just the roar.
“Well actually, when Kilkenny came out onto the field it wasn’t as bad but when Galway came out on the field for their warm-up, just the roar and not being able to hear or call for a ball from the lads beside you.
“It was just the noise, the atmosphere. Obviously it was something I’d never experienced and that was the initial shock of it but yeah, other than that, it’s a game of hurling and I’m playing hurling all my life.
“Just go out and try and do the right things and that was the message coming from Brian Cody and the management team and some of the players, the senior players that were there as well, just work hard.”
That All-Ireland Final win was a launchpad to a fine 13-year senior inter-county career for Walsh that saw him win three All-Irelands, eight Leinsters, five Allianz Leagues, and one All-Star.
How does he look back on it all now? Satisfied that he achieved all he could have, or are there one or two regrets in the mix as well?
“You look back with fond memories on a lot of it,” he says. “I suppose you look back at some of the games that you lost, All-Ireland finals and that. Like, I lost the last four All-Ireland finals that I was in and I won the first three so you’d have been looking back on some of those games, definitely.
“Tipp won two of them and Limerick won two as well. Yeah, you would like to have won some of those towards the end of the career.
“You see some of the Clare lads last year, they won in ‘13 and then they won again last year. It was a nice little break between them but, look, you’re just so grateful to win any of them."
Walter Walsh, Kilkenny, lifts the Liam MacCarthy Cup after the 2014 GAA Hurling All Ireland Senior Championship Final Replay, Kilkenny v Tipperary. Croke Park, Dublin. Picture credit: Pat Murphy / SPORTSFILE.
He has no regrets about retiring from inter-county hurling after last year’s championship campaign.
When he was up doing night feeds last November and December after the birth of his and his wife Vicky’s twins, Charlie and Kate, it definitely felt like the right decision, but his mind had been made up long before then.
“We won’t blame the twins for it now! No, Charlie and Kate are flying it. Look, I was injured for a lot of last year. I kind of tore the top of my groin off the bone and I was lucky I didn’t need surgery.
“That was last February. I was only back from the club campaign. I gave three months rehabbing it and I suppose I was only back near the end of it. If I was playing, if I knew I was going to be starting on the team, you might be looking at it differently, but I don’t think that would have been the case. Look, I gave long enough wearing the Kilkenny jersey and I think it was time just to step aside.”
His retirement from inter-county hurling has given him the opportunity to indulge in another sporting love - rugby.
Walter Walsh, right, during a Leinster Rugby Juniors squad training session at Gorey RFC in Gorey, Wexford. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile.
Before hurling became his priority he had played rugby with New Ross so he rejoined his old club, hit the ground running in his old position of outside centre, and did so well that it opened an unexpected door.
“I'm doing a bit with Leinster juniors now,” says Walsh. They give me a phone call there two weeks ago, they have interprovincials, kind of a seven-week block. So they play Ulster, Connacht and Munster. I got asked to do that as well.
“They're picking a panel now so I've been training with that team the last week really. It's something completely different. I got to pull on a Leinster jersey last week and it's nice. I played a bit, we played the Defence Forces in a game and it's something I always wanted to do, pull on the Leinster jersey.
“I've been playing rugby since I was five years of age. Obviously I had a 15-year break between when I was 18 and 33 last year when I got to play again. I didn't think I'd ever get to put on one (a Leinster jersey). But I did and that was nice for me.”
