Tommy Walsh admits that his glittering intercounty career ended sooner than he expected.

Walsh - winner of nine successive All Star awards and nine All-Irelands - didn't start a championship match for the Cats last year and he decided to step away, knowing that his input was no longer required:

"I knew when I was moved from the backs into the forwards that the time was coming," he tells gaa.ie

"If I was in the backs you might be out of form but you'd get back into it. My natural position is in the backs - that's where I love hurling, that's where I love training and love playing. I suppose the forwards is a bit different to that and when I did move up I knew that it would be my last year.

"I never wanted to go out on a high. My thing was to go whenever I wasn't being picked. I didn't think it would come that early and I thought I might get another year or two out of it. I was obviously hoping to go as long as I could and it did end a bit early for me.

"I would hate to be sitting back at home and thinking that if I stayed I could still have been playing. That would have been a bigger regret of mine. I'm happy the way I went out but obviously I would have liked if it had gone on a bit longer."

Walsh will do his Legends tour of Croke Park this Saturday.

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