Gearoid Hegarty: 'I wanted to get back to me enjoying my hurling and playing well'

GEAROID Hegarty has been in superb form for Limerick throughout the Munster Hurling Championship where he has scored 1-12 from play. 

Last year the Limerick attacker missed out on an all-star but Hegarty himself feels he hasn't done anything different this year compared to previous years or lost a significant amount of weight during the off-season. 

"Peter Casey must have given you a ring this morning to ask you to ask me that question, did he? Me and Peter always slag  each other about that type of thing. I’m 30 in August, which is another story, I can’t believe I’m 30 in August, but I feel like I’ve a fair idea how to approach a season nowadays whether it’s in pre-season, the league, the break between the league and championship or the championship.

"I do the same thing over and over. I didn’t necessarily go over cutting down… now, you’re not the first person to say that to me, a good few people have said that to me. It’s not something I went after, no. Look, it’s not a bad thing to have said to you but it’s amazing how the mind works. It’s a compliment but I’m always thinking to myself, ‘Jees, was I in bad shape last year?’ That’s just the way it is," Hegarty said at the launch of Bord Gáís Energy's 33% off electricity bills for the next 12 months when you switch before June 30.

In 2023 the St Patricks clubman believes he didn't deserve an All Star. 

"I don’t think I deserved a nomination last year so I didn’t feel angst about it, I didn’t feel left out or anything along those lines. I felt that I didn’t deserve one. I would have actually nearly been embarrassed if I had got one last year. It was more so determination to try and get back to somewhere closer to my best for my own self, for my family and my friends was more important to me than external things. The All-Stars are brilliant and everything but they are subjective at the end of the day. I wanted to get back to me enjoying my hurling and playing well and looking forward to the road that we have ahead of us over the next couple of weeks leading into July 7. That was more so my concern."

Limerick can face either Cork, Dublin or Wexford in the All-Ireland SHC semi-final on July 7 but for Gearoid Hegarty he doesn't care who they play. Many people might think that the Shannonsiders want revenge on Cork after their defeat to the Rebels in round three of the Munster SHC but that hasn't entered the 2020 hurler of the year's mind. 

"No, I don't think so. I never worry about who we're going to play, who you'd like to play or who you want to play. When you start thinking about things like this, you're taking your eye off what really matters and the only thing that matters. I know it's a cliche, but looking after ourselves. Making sure I'm turning up to training, ready to give my all. Preparation is so important.

"If I get on that train to Dublin on July 7, knowing that I have trained as hard as I can over the last couple weeks and prepared as best as I can, to give my all for the team, then that's all you can do. We never, and I'm sure you've heard it from other players, maybe from John in the past, it's a sign of respect more than anything, we never, ever are concerned about who we're playing. We know every day we go out we’re going to be tested to the utmost, you know what I mean? And we just want to prepare to the best of our abilities and make sure that we're 100% ready to go to battle and see what happens after that. So we always just focus on ourselves."

This Saturday in Semple Stadium, Cork face Dublin at 1.15pm and Clare take on Wexford at 3.15pm. On Saturday evening the reigning Munster champions opponents in the All-Ireland SHC semi-final will be confirmed. 

After Limerick's victory over Clare in the Munster Final, Declan Hannon lifted the Mick Mackey Cup for sixth year in-a-row. One particular moment of Hannon's speech gained a lot of attention among hurling fans.

The Adare clubman said 'We've a backroom team of 53 people. I'm not gonna thank them all."

The former Limerick footballer was bemused by the reaction. 

"With all the personal assistants and shopping assistants and people who are cooking and all that kind of stuff, the numbers rack up fairly quickly!

Do you know what, I actually didn’t even hear it. Sometimes it’s very hard to hear the speech from where we are. I don’t know what it is, a lot of the time you can get sidetracked. I didn’t see anything about it until maybe Monday afternoon when someone had sent it to me. But, look, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that we don’t have a 53-man backroom team or whatever he said. We have 37 players. That was it really.

“Look, it’s a mountain out of a molehill if ever there was. As I said, it’s obvious that we have a lot of players in the panel. I just think people run with everything nowadays. They want to make a controversy out of the smallest things. I didn’t pay any attention to it for a couple of days until somebody said it to me."

Hurling takes up a huge amount of Hegarty's time but he also has a keen interest in golf. The secondary school teacher was watching last weekend's US Open and has a certain degree of sympathy for Rory McIlroy.

"Jesus, I was absolutely glued to it for the four days. I don't know. It's a tough one. It's a horrible one. It's one that'll probably be remembered forever. I  was devastated myself so I can only imagine what he feels. I actually rang my father at 43 minutes past 11 because he is one of the biggest McIlroy fans in the country just to see how he was. Like, I'm obviously not living at home anymore, and I knew he'd be glued to it as I was, and it was Father's Day and he said, 'I'm after having an incredible weekend, an incredible evening,' they went out for dinner, I wasn't able to make because we were training but he said, 'That's after absolutely ruining my weekend.' So God only knows how poor Rory feels."