Paul Curran inside the circle again

The seasons get more complicated. That is something Paul Curran has discovered. All of this year, he has been juggling.

At home, the delight of a first baby arriving in the house in February. “Kept us busy,” he grinned. Early mornings became a routine, added to a busy work life and then also, in his existence as a hurler, he had to deal with the complication of coming back from hip surgery.

It has been one step forward and then retreat.

Six weeks ago, he felt he had hit a wall. He returned to Tipperary training and immediately tried to prove to himself and his team-mates nothing had changed.

“It was probably the worst thing I could have done,” he conceded when he sat down in a boardroom in the Horse and Jockey hotel outside Thurles.

Surgery

Outside, the rain came down in heavy sheets; the championship felt like months away. So Curran went back to visit

Pat Carton

, who had carried out his surgery in the Whitfield Clinic.

Curran’s procedure was, he explained, fairly straight-forward, with the temporary removal of cartilage around the ball and socket in the hip, a general cleaning out of the area and then the cartilage stitched back in.

“The next day I was back on the bike, cycling easy. It wasn’t sore . . . just three out of ten, pain-wise. I had read the leaflet inside out. I thought once I had 12 weeks reached I would be playing but it didn’t work out that way.”

Pat Carton told him to relax; to ease up on the running and just cycle and to slowly mobilise the joint. It worked, and for the past fortnight, he has been training just fine.

He doesn’t disguise his relief. All spring, he was outside the circle. In the crowd for the matches against Waterford and Dublin and Cork and in touch with the others by text, yes. But he still hadn’t a clue what was going on. When Tipperary went through a losing streak, he was no wiser than anyone else.

“People would come up to you and ask you how things were going on, that they were going badly and they would be asking me for the answers and I would be saying I don’t know because I’m not in there.

“And it really hit home that when you are on the outside you haven’t a clue what is going on.”

Now, what is going on involves trying to make up for lost time. Curran reckons he is just trying to push for a place on the panel of 26. Then he will worry about the game time. Hurling seems to change with every season. He talks about the attention to detail in the Tipperary camp. For instance, it turns out Kieran McGeeney’s role with Tipperary is occasional rather than constant.

“When I wasn’t part of it you would swear Kieran was up there at every training session, the way some lads were talking. Maybe every month to six weeks we would see him.”

Another addition to the back room staff is Gary Ryan, the former Irish sprinter.

Tweak

“We were doing the warm-up last week and he spotted me giving a little tweak and he came over to me and said: ‘Paul, step out’. He is able to see these things. I think he ran his fastest time when he was 33, so there is hope for us all.

“He just seems to be able to talk to you; he knows what you are thinking and what you are going through, particularly the older guys. He is a Tipp man and really wants us to do well.”

There is pressure for places. Curran talks about the composition of the Tipperary defence, noting how well James Barry has slotted into wing back. "That's all good, you need that. May the best man get it, is my philosophy."

Tipperary’s form in the league final has revived spirits. The spring storm passed, was the verdict. Here was the real Tipperary. The trouble is they lost the game.

"Sunday against Limerick will tell if there is more confidence. We were extremely disappointed, there is no hiding that. We're kind of tired of hearing of it being a great game and 'hard luck'. It doesn't wash with us anymore.

“We sat down and met the following day and said we had to move on because championship is a completely different animal. You can’t compare league with championship; I know that from the amount of years I have been there and the older guys try and impart that to the younger guys”

Curran is 32 now: a senior figure on a team trying to figure out how to rediscover its consistent excellence.

He is no facts and figures man – "I wouldn't even be great on names," he laughs, and was surprised when he heard Eoin Kelly noting the Munster final of 2012 marked Tipperary's last championship win. He has been around long enough to see the on-going evolution of forwards acting as willing defenders, pressurising opposition backs into rash clearances or mistakes.

“In any of the conditioning games we play seven on seven, it is a part of it. All team are kind of doing it; we played Waterford in a challenge and I could hear them roaring at their backs to block them up.

Defending

“Even the league game, I was impressed with Waterford’s defending. A lot of teams are trying to focus on that because the speed is there now amongst the forwards and you have to try and stop them because if they get an overlap they are looking for goals because the space is being created.”

He makes no big predictions and points out he has seen enough championship seasons to know any player’s fortunes can turn over a couple of weeks.

"My memory is that in one year Noel Hickey only played an All-Ireland semi-final and final and finished with an All Star. Who knows, will any of us have a part to play."

Paul Curran is back in the shake up. It’s enough. For now.