How John Maher went from sitting in the stand after nightmare debut to an All-Star
John Maher couldn’t sit still. It was 2022, Galway’s first All-Ireland final appearance in over 20 years. His best friend was lining out at corner-forward. He was watching from the Cusack Stand.
“I remember I couldn’t go for a few with everyone in town beforehand, I was so nervous, I just headed straight in,” he recalls now.
“Especially for Robert Finnerty, being so close to fulfilling that dream. I was so nervous for him. After watching that and seeing what it did to the county, what it did to me and how I felt about Galway football, I suppose it is just the scale of it all. I said it is something I’d love to be involved in.” Come 2024, they were playing alongside each other on the same stage. Maher had experience of the senior setup prior to that Kerry decider but it was a chastening one. This year he became a fulcrum of their surge back to the showpiece, one of several monsters in the middle. He is an All-Star and Footballer of the Year nominee. He built to that phase, brick by brick.
Powerhouse midfielders can be moulded if the raw clay is there. The 25-year-old was always brimming with potential. He reached an All-Ireland minor final with Galway in 2016. He came from an athletics background, winning cross-country All-Irelands as a teen and running middle distance on the track.
It was all developing towards a senior debut. Then the walls caved in. Maher started at midfield against Mayo in the delayed 2020 National League. They were hammered by 15 points. He was hooked at half-time. He wouldn’t represent Galway again until 2023.
“It didn’t go too well for me or Galway that day,” he says.
“It definitely felt like a bit of unfinished business. I wouldn’t like to look back and say that was my only cameo in a Galway senior jersey.
“That was such a strange taste of an intercounty setup. Within the first two weeks of coming in after the 2022 season, I fell in love with the high-performance setup, if you want to call it that. In 2020 we had to have meetings outside. You came alone in your car because of all the covid regulations.
“I didn’t get a proper flavour for what it was. The result wasn’t scarring, a drubbing like that is embarrassing but I didn’t take it personally either. The difference from that setup and 2022 was chalk and cheese. It was a different climate.”
He finished university, went travelling and hoped for another chance. A terrific campaign with Salthill-Knocknacarra saw him recalled by Pádraic Joyce. There he found the conditions to flourish. Is becoming an intercounty footballer about nature or nurture? In his case it was both.
“Take simple ball skills, there is such a focus on skills especially in pre-season with Galway. The handpass, it goes back to basics. Execute with left hand, right hand. We always say target. Give a man a target with a hand up, get the ball to hand then.
“I look at the game completely differently now too. Originally, I didn’t look at it in the detail. I wasn’t even aware of what I could look at. I always focused on work-rate, putting yourself about the pitch, hitting targets like five tackles or a certain amount of kickouts. That hasn’t changed but in terms of the tactics involved, where you try to lead players, your position on the pitch, where you are in relation to your team-mates, just spatial awareness. That has changed completely.
“You learn in the video room. You see what you need to fix or you go ask coaches what did I do wrong here. It was about getting that feedback the whole time and not being afraid to get pulled up. We had a structure to our video sessions and how we break down games. So sometimes players are selected to get clips and have them in for a certain deadline. The analysis coach uses the majority of them.
“There was a lot of player involvement in our video. When you are asked to do a task like that, and you know it will be presented to the group, that pressure makes you look at a game in more detail. Have your homework done basically.”
This is the point. Environment, talent, lifestyle, it all counts. Maher played every minute of this year’s league out of pure necessity. Galway’s injury crisis gave him the opportunity. A mechanical engineer, he was working in Dublin throughout 2023. A move home meant another piece clicked into place.
“I found that really tough last year. If it wasn’t for (coach) John Divilly being based in Dublin and him being able to drive, so at least I wasn’t stressing about getting down or any of that.
“I could take work on the way up and down, it would’ve been incredibly difficult without him. I would be working on my laptop in the back of the car, John was working too, taking calls in the front. We’d a portable office going up and down the road. But I moved back to Galway at the start of March and that was huge too.”
All that said, there is no getting away from the disappointment that was defeat to Armagh.
“In 2022 I lost a final with my club. We came close but we weren’t expected to get to a final. So originally there was a sense of achievement with that.
“On reflection though, as time went on, that is starting to hurt more and more now. I guess because we realise, two more seasons have gone by, how hard it is to get back there. So yeah, on a personal level it is nice to go from being in the stand in 2022 to being on the pitch in 2024, but I’m still processing the defeat really. How will it itch at me in a few years’ time if we don’t have one?”
Even still, things are moving in the right direction. Maher and Finnerty are Salthill-Knocknacarra’s first ever All-Stars. It is fitting too, given all they have done together.
“I couldn’t believe it, when you think of the past players we’ve had. I’m delighted I get to share it with Robert to be honest. I played with him my whole life; I was so influenced by his dad. He was my coach the whole way up. He drove us all around the county.
“He would enter us in North Board B competitions in the age-group above just so we could play more football. He’d a six-seater car, fill it up with a third of the team and off we’d go. So to share this with him now will be really special.”