The Tullaroan tornado, Tommy Walsh was a raging sea of defiance for more than a decade

If you pause for a moment you can almost hear it whispering through its 200-year-old stately walls. The motto for St Kieran’s College is ‘Hiems Transit’, which is Latin for ‘Winter has passed’.

If you linger a little longer - until the school bell tolls - you will encounter a rare sight, that is a compelling reminder of what this iconic college is all about.

This is a hurling place.

The evidence is unashamedly strewn around every nook and cranny.

Scores of discarded hurleys and helmets briefly abandoned, lay proudly against the grainy hallowed walls.

Each and every one of them has a story ready to be told. For you cannot walk a single step here without feeling hurling… seeping into your bones.

The unfettered ash tree grows to be one of the tallest trees in the forest, up to 30 to 40 metres (100 to 130 feet). The excelsior component of its scientific name means ‘higher’ or ‘loftier’. Yet, there is nowhere in Ireland that the mighty ash stands taller than within the most famous hurling nursery on the island.

When the playing ends - academics resume again. The endless relentless cycle of sporting and academic brilliance - dancing through the decades.

St Kieran’s College was founded in Kilkenny, in the diocese of Ossory in 1782, and named after St Ciarán of Saigir, Apostle of Osraige, one of the first-ever saints to be born in Ireland.

The college has many famous past pupils including actor Ralph Fiennes who received two Academy Award nominations and former Tánaiste John Wilson of Fianna Fáil.

The college is synonymous with hurling and has enjoyed incredible success in all grades, winning 24 All-Ireland senior colleges finals and over 50 Leinster senior colleges titles.

Walsh and Cork’s Brian Murphy.  Picture: Brendan Moran

Past pupils read like a who’s who of hurling’s greatest ever players. Henry Shefflin, Eddie Keher, Eoin Kelly of Tipperary, and Nicky Rackard of Wexford.

No list of the greatest ever sporting illuminati in St Kieran’s would be complete without Tommy Walsh.

The Tullaroan tornado was a raging sea of defiance in Brian Cody’s brigade for well over a decade - ruling the battlefront by air and by sea.

“Overpower, Overtake, Overcome,” the mantra of tennis giant Serena Williams, summed up Tommy Walsh’s unquantifiable talents. Not the biggest, not the strongest, not the quickest, but none of the above really mattered.

He had a huge heart and an unquenchable will. He was a ball of fury, coated in the hardest enamel. At times it appeared he carried a step-ladder as he soared above lanky attackers and extinguished any incoming aerial and ground bombardments.
His career began in sparkling fashion with the under-21 side and a surprise phone call while he was pucking a ball around the back garden of his family home made him an offer he couldn't refuse!

“There weren't any mobiles around then; well I certainly didn’t have one anyway,” Walsh says. “And the mother called me and said there was someone looking for me on the phone.

“It was Brian (Cody).

“He just asked me to be involved in a few training sessions, there wasn't any real invitation onto the panel. Luckily enough, I did OK and was kept on the panel for the rest of the year.”

Former past-pupil of St Kieran’s and Offaly star, Brian Carroll has a theory on why someone so diminutive ruled the hurling skies as he detailed on ‘Sportsjoe’.

“I remember this game we used to play and I'll tell you, this is why Tommy Walsh was so good in the air…

“So one poor young lad would be asked to strike the ball, there could be 30 or 40 lads under it jumping up and trying to win it. It was all within the rules of the game alright, but Jesus, it was absolute blue murder and if you won the ball, you were the man, like”...Tom Hogan has spent a lifetime in St Kieran’s, as a student in the ’70s and as a teacher.

Walsh, in full flight, wins possession

Managing the senior hurling team affords him many unique insights into the mindset of a hurling phenomenon, and he concurs with Carroll’s observations.

“The very same thing still continues today. Usually what happens is fellas leave their hurls down and go up and try to catch the ball. One fella hits the ball up among around 30 fellas, and the strongest survives you know!”

MARKED BY LAR CORBETT

In the 2012 All-Ireland Hurling semi-final viewers could well have been advised not to adjust their television sets. Tipperary’s celebrated forward Lar Corbett appeared to abandon his attacking role to mark Tommy Walsh.

It was a tactic Corbett had become acquainted with while in Australia - a vast sporting continent. Given both Tipperary’s and Corbett’s questionable applications of this rather strange methodology, it’s not really hard to see their comparative lack of sporting successes per capita … on a world stage!

While Tommy was slightly curtailed and bewildered by the ‘hurling heist of the century in reverse,’ the Premier’s removal of their chief scoring threat proved a bridge too far as a baffled Tommy Walsh revealed on TG4’s Laochra Gael.

“I was marking Pa Bourke and I was obviously following him and Lar was following me trying to stop me hurling and it was just a massive mistake, I felt, for Tipperary.

“He couldn’t get on the ball with the tactics that Tipperary was employing so it was frustrating, but there were no real verbals.

The only verbals that were going on were between me and Jackie. He just kept telling me to look at the scoreboard and forget about it.

“They should have backed Lar Corbett that, whether it was Jackie Tyrrell marking, whether it was JJ (Delaney), whether it was Paul Murphy, he would bring them into the edge of the square, man-on-man, and take him on because Lar could destroy you in a second.”

Tommy Walsh played the game just like he did in the schoolyard. When his career ended, perhaps he laid his hurley against the hallowed walls of the college ready for the next man up in the never-ending cycle of St Kieran’s royal hurling family.

A SAINT AND SCHOLAR’S PILGRIMAGE

At St Kieran's College in Kilkenny, Walsh established himself as a key member of the senior hurling team. In 1999 he won his first Leinster medal following a 3-13 to 1-11 defeat of Dublin Colleges.

He collected a second Leinster medal in 2000 as Dublin Colleges were beaten by 2–13 to 1–10. St Flannan’s College of Ennis provided the opposition in the subsequent All-Ireland decider and St Kieran’s and Walsh were put to the pin of their collars before prevailing 1-10 to 0-9 victory, earning Tommy a precious Croke Cup All-Ireland medal.

Tommy also played with University College Cork. In 2004, he was a left wing-back as UCC lost to Waterford Institute of Technology in the final of the Fitzgibbon Cup.

Walsh was a member of the Tullaroan minor team and under-21 sides that won county titles before graduating to the senior ranks.

Walsh first played for Kilkenny at the turn of the century when he joined the minor side. He won his sole Leinster medal in 2001, beating Wexford.

With the Kilkenny under-21 team, he won his first Leinster medal that year following a 0-12 to 1-4 defeat of Dublin, and an All-Ireland medal against Galway.

At senior level, he was part of the legendary Brian Cody side and mined 10 Leinster titles, nine All-Irelands, seven National Hurling Leagues, and a staggering nine All-Star Awards.

HARD MAN RATING
TOUGHEST: 9.5/10
SCARIEST: 9.0/10
HARDIEST: 19.5/20
TOTAL HARD MAN RATING: 38.0/40