Tommy Walsh
By Tommy Walsh
The joy of winning in hurling or any other sport is an addiction that never leaves you.
If you really want to experience joy in your sport then winning must be a major part of it.
But what constitutes winning? Do you have to be a League, All-Ireland, or local club champion to be a winner?
Yes, and no.
Because if winning was just about accumulating medals then we would have a lot of fairly miserable players playing our sport as only one team can win the title every year.
I think the real winners are those who value the experience of winning every single day they lace up a pair of boots to go training or play a match, whatever the occasion.
In deepest, darkest January when the trainer tells you to leave the hurls in the car and make your way to the nearest set of cones you might feel like jumping back in the car and speeding back out the gate and home to watch the latest episode of Nashville or Game of Thrones.
But you don’t.
Even though you hate the thought of that painful stamina training on a wet, heavy pitch you crave the feeling of winning.
Because you’re not just a winner when you get an All-Ireland medal in your hand, you’re a winner when you compete against yourself and persevere.
That feeling of giving it absolute socks and finishing every run with a burst so when it’s all over you can walk back to the dressing-room and say to yourself, ‘I gave it everything I had’.
That’s the joy of winning.
The opposite of winning is when you just half do the runs and go home half-tired. Then you drive out through the gate thick with yourself because you know deep down you know you didn’t give it your all.
Kellogg's Cúl Camps have become a summer rite of passage for tens of thousands of children every year.
I help out with our Under-6 team in Tullaroan that’s managed by Donny Hogan. He’s a great young manager who understands these young players brilliantly.
Even at their age-group I can see how much joy they get from winning. And it’s not so much the matches but the little victories they savour.
The joy I see in their faces when they rise the ball for the first time is class. They run straight over to tell one of the coaches with their little faces lit up with pride.
And when they score a goal, the jumps, the fist-pumps, the smiles are glorious to see.
Or when they save a ball destined for the back of the net they might look over to see was their mother or father or looking as they revel in the pride of having done their best.
It’s pure magic once a training match is over to see them all run over to Donny to find out if they won, but for many of them the victory is a more subtle one.
For a quieter kid it might be the validation of joining in, running around, and making a new friend. They mightn’t have pucked a ball, but they go out that gate with a smile on their face.
That’s the joy of winning.
When it comes to the long summer evenings and training matches are in full flow that joy of winning is even better again.
The ball goes into a ruck, you tear in after it, and if you come out with it and drive it down the field the buzz is unreal.
That’s the joy of winning.
Your marker gets around you and buries the ball in the net, but the next ball comes in, you get the flick away, and stop his momentum.
The disappointment you felt moments ago is already a fading memory because now you’re winning again.
A ball is driven down the field 100 yards between you and your marker, you put your hand up, and the ball stays in your fingers. That feeling is just glorious.
That’s the joy of winning.
Tommy Walsh
You don’t need cups or medals to know what it is to be a winner, you can experience that joy every day you go out to play the game.
And the thing is, if you’re motivated by all those little everyday wins and living in the moment then you might pick up a few big ones along the way.
The Galway hurlers shouldn’t be even thinking about what it might feel like to walk up the Hogan Stand steps this September.
When they run out onto the pitch to face Tipperary in Sunday’s All-Ireland Semi-Final they need to be living in the now.
They need to be focused on making the next block, catching the next ball, scoring the next point and enjoying that winning feeling every chance they get.
When I think of winners I think of people who can think positively regardless of circumstance. People who can roll with the punches and become doubly determined to win the next little battle after losing one rather than be discouraged by that loss.
One of the moments of this hurling championship so far was what Derek McGrath and his Waterford management team did in the minutes after the full-time whistle blew against Kilkenny.
Before going into the dressing-room they took a couple of minutes to gather their thoughts, refocus, and get their body-language right.
The Waterford players must have been gutted to have given up what looked like a winning position late in normal time, but when the dressing-room door opened and they looked up they saw a management team that were still up for the fight, that weren’t lying down, that were determined to win the next battle.
A management team that said, ‘not today, not on our watch’. In that moment in that dressing-room Waterford won a very important battle.
Derek McGrath
And it was a win that ultimately led to an even bigger one when they ran out onto the field and dominated Kilkenny in extra-time.
That’s the sort of winning mentality and body language that Galway need to show on Sunday.
They all need to be able to look at one another and say, ‘he is giving it socks, so I better too’.
At least then no matter what the result they can lie in their beds at night and be happy they gave it everything they had.
They need to embrace the joy of winning and hurl with positivity because that’s what Tipperary will do.
Those Tipperary players are like lads who spent the whole of their young lives in their back gardens with a hurl and ball. When they play they bring a sense of excitement to the contest, a real buzz to the thing.
When a Tipp player gets a ball you’re thinking, ‘What’s he going to do with it? What skill is he going to pull out of his armoury this time?’
When Paudie Maher grabs the sliotar from the sky and drives it back down the field the whole stadium roars and jumps to their feet.
That’s the joy of winning.
These Tipperary players are capable of doing great things like that because from a young age they realised the joy of winning comes from mastering the skills of the game and then savouring the moments when you produce them under pressure.
They’re always looking to make the big play because they’re positive by nature, live in the moment, and know the importance of accumulating those little wins.
John McGrath
When you recognise guys by their first-names or nick-names you know you’re dealing with a team that has been there, done that.
Bonner, Bubbles, Seamie, the McGrath brothers, you don’t need to reach for a programme, you know who I’m talking about.
Those lads realised from a young age that there was magic to be found and something to be won every day they picked up a hurl, and that’s what you’re trying to teach kids to appreciate.
You just have to admire the wonderful skill of these Tipperary players. High, low, short and long, it doesn’t matter to these guys because that’s what the great players do, they adapt and overcome.
They don’t care if it’s a traditional game, a defensive game, a possession game, they will play it any way you like and beat you anyway.
But the joy of winning doesn’t just come from doing the spectacular, it has to come from doing the nitty gritty stuff too, the thankless tasks.
When Tipperary don’t have the ball on Sunday, that’s when we’ll really see if they have what’s needed to win two-in-a-row.
Both teams have trained hard and possess loads of ability, so a contest of fine margins will be won by whichever has the greater winning mentality, that greater desire to experience the joy of winning.
