Hurler of the Month Hegarty on returning to Junior hurling and “brilliant” split season

Hegarty was named as the Hurler of the Month as he collected his fourth All-Ireland medal in July.

The clock hadn’t ticked into the fourth minute but already the hefty Croke Park attendance knew Gearoid Hegarty was at the pitch of the game.

After plundering 0-7 and 2-2 in the previous All-Ireland finals, the St Patrick’s man once more showed his big game mentality as his ferocious fourth minute strike gave Eoin Murphy no chance in the Kilkenny net.

Hegarty didn’t let up and five points followed throughout a dominant display as he ultimately proved the difference between the sides.

His injury time score, arguably the pick of the bunch, gave Limerick the cushion they needed as they held out for a three-in-a-row, cementing their place among the greats.

That was 17 July, with Hegarty claiming his fourth All-Ireland medal to go with a pair of Man of the Match awards.

But less than two weeks, Hegarty was back with his club lining out against Killeedy in the first round of the Limerick Junior Championship.

Speaking to GAA.ie after picking up the Hurler of the Month award, he described the experience of returning to the club scene after the highs of the All-Ireland.

“I’d be lying if I said it was anything other than extremely tough. You go from our set-up at inter-county level which is obviously extremely high, it’s pretty much professional without it being in name. You go from the Gaelic Grounds for training with brand new bags of sliotars waiting for you to puck around with and to train with.

“Our first club championship game was in a thunderstorm against Kileedy a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday night and we went back training on Tuesday down in the field and the grass was about six inches long and the sliotars were soaked from the game on Saturday night, they weren’t dried out.

“I just said, ‘wow, what trip back down to earth from the highs that we had over the last number of weeks’. But, look, that’s the club scene. It’s like a different sport but it’s great to be involved at the same time.

For Hegarty and co, the start of the championship hasn’t worked out as the city club would have hoped. A draw was played out against Killeedy before they suffered defeat to Monagea in the second round.

That leaves them on one point after a pair of rounds in a notoriously difficult grade to get out of with 24 teams competing for one promotion spot.

St Patricks were actually junior champions in 2017, beating Kilmallock after a trilogy that included a pair of draws. But relegation followed in 2020 with the side bowing out to the eventual champions in last year’s championship.

Nonetheless, Hegarty is positive about the future of the club with good numbers at underage levels and his own brother Diarmuid, who has represented at Limerick at all underage levels, now an integral part of the side.

“It’s on such a smaller scale but it means so much as well because they’re the lads that you would have grown up hurling with. And now obviously my brother is on the team as well with the club. We need to hopefully get back up intermediate because there’s so much work going on in my club at underage level and it’ll be a number of years before we see the fruition of that.

“It would be nice to get back up intermediate for the crop of players that is coming through. I was down there recently giving out medals at underage training recently for U-8s, U-10s, and U-12s and, honest to God, there must have been 30 or 40 of them at every age-group.”

Hegarty is also a phenomenal footballer in his own right, playing with the Limerick seniors for a couple of years before switching codes.

That makes him a key member for his club with the big ball where Pats line out in the Intermediate ranks.

As a stalwart for club in both codes, Hegarty is in a good position to judge the new split season and Limerick’s #10 is “a big fan of it.”

“Spectators are getting to go to club games again in August in beautiful weather. Club players are getting to play proper championship games on good surfaces. There’s been a bit of focus on the negatives around it. Yes, the season is condensed but there are so many positives associated with the split season as well.

“Look at the wet weather that the club championships have been played in over the last number of years. I know, down in Limerick, there’s been record attendances at club games down in Limerick over the last number of weeks. There were thousands at a Premier Intermediate game a couple of weeks ago in Clarina between Kildimo and Mungret who are local rivals.

“I think the demands on the players nowadays are getting harder and harder. Shortening the season a small bit, it is putting pressure on you from game-to-game; if you get a niggle, you might miss two or three games, but that’s just life.

“Every single inter-county team this year would have trained over 100 times, and some of them 150 times depending on when they went back and how far they went in the championship. If you think about training 150 times for maybe six league games, and five or six championship games, there’s no other sport in the world that does that.

“Look at the Premier League, they’re playing games every single week. Basketball in America, NFL, it’s all games week on week.

“I know it’s tough, but in my opinion, as a player what you want is games. You don’t want a game followed by a five-week block of training before your next game. That’s much harder to me than it would be to have a game, and recover for a couple of days, and have a game the following week or even a two-week break to the next game.

“Players want games, spectators want games. I think it’s great. I think the split season is brilliant. I know it was very shortened. I’m not saying it’s the perfect solution; I don’t think there is a perfect solution. Maybe it could be made slightly better, I’m not sure, but I thought this year was very beneficial. This year was a success, definitely.”