Tommy Walsh on the brilliance of former Cork hurler Wayne Sherlock

KILKENNY legend Tommy Walsh has hailed the defensive nous of former Cork All-Star back Wayne Sherlock.

This Saturday night in Nowlan Park, Sherlock, in his role as selector, will be hoping the Cork U20 rearguard shut down Dublin in the All-Ireland final.

There are some very promising man-markers in the Cork squad, in Eoin Roche and Conor O’Callaghan, with Daire Connery, Ciarán Joyce, Aaron Walsh Barry, and Daire O’Leary completing the back six that started in the Munster final win over Tipp before Christmas.

They’ve an ideal role model in Sherlock according to Tommy Walsh, who was speaking in a recent Off The Ball podcast on hurling skills.

The 43-year-old was an expert in dispossessing forwards at close range explained Walsh.

Wayne Sherlock was a brilliant, brilliant defender from Blackrock. A fantastic defender, great baller as well.

“He was great to get in tight and at the last second to flick it away. You’re in tight, you’re strong to stop your man from breaking the tackle and getting away from you, he only has a few seconds then to throw up the ball and Wayne Sherlock is getting the flick in, taking it away from him.”

Walsh began his senior career as a forward, clipping 0-3 from the wing in the 2003 All-Ireland final victory over Cork, before moving to the number five geansaí he made his own for a decade. Despite being one of the greatest backs of all-time, he appreciates the brilliance of elite forwards.

“Messi, Ronaldo... you tune into the games just to see these guys. Hurling is no different.

“The highest art form is to be able to win your own ball and put it in the back of the net. That’s what we all love to see.

“If you go back through All-Ireland winning teams they all had great forwards, all able to win their own ball. They make the most difficult things look simple, Johan Cruyff always said it.”

Securing possession is the most important element of hurling for Walsh. And it begins with the countless hours spent playing on your own or with your friends as a kid.

“That’s the key. Learning to catch a ball could go back to your childhood, not just ‘determination on the day’. It’s different for a back from a forward, it’s so much different for a guy who is 5’ 6” to a guy that’s 6’ 4”. It’s much more difficult to catch a ball in the forwards.

“I wasn’t fast so the tighter the game was the better. I was all about reading the play. From when I was five or six years old I was practising catching balls. Not on the training ground even just at home in the garden.”

It was the school of hard knocks for Walsh, his family, which includes current Kilkenny senior Pádraig, and friends, in rural Tullaroan.

“We’d 10 or 11 of us in our area and we used to play games where you only had to have three people, one lad in goal and two outfield. It was first to 11 points, goals and points, so 3-2 would win it.

“The goalie might hit it out high and you’d to catch it. It might come low and you’d to learn to win it 50-50. You could pull on the ball too so you’d to learn to guard your hand.

We also had barbed wire as our sideline so you had to be able to rise it up fast so you wouldn’t get a dunt into it! Pretty dangerous when you think about it now but you’d to keep the cattle out too!

“We also had the wall out the back and you’d puck it and learn to catch the ball at its highest like Christy Ring used to always say.

“Sometimes you might be down the field and the ball would be thrown up among 10 of us with no hurleys and you trying to catch it.

“You often hear Johnny Giles and Eamonn Dunphy on about ‘street football’, well this was ‘street hurling’ really. You take an U11 team if they train two or three times a week that’s only three or four hours a week only.”