This time last year Brendan Maher was nursing a cruciate ligament injury. Fast forward 12 months and he has a third All-Ireland medal in his back pocket.

The Premier County star was honoured with the Gaelic Writers' Association's Hurling Personality of the Year (sponsored by Sky Sports) award last night and he reflected on his long journey back to full fitness.

“I always believed I could get back, but in saying that I’d be lying if I said there weren’t times when you’d have doubts in your head,” the 2016 All-Ireland winning captain admitted.

“You’d have some tough days. I stuck to the recovery process – there would be times when you were making good progress but then there would be days when the knee would get sore, and you’d find yourself thinking ‘the week before it was better than it is now.’ So you’d end up and wondering what’s wrong. So you’d have doubts every so often.

“But I was very fortunate with the support network I had around me in Tipperary, the likes of Dr Brendan Murphy, Paddy O’Brien (physio) and Cairbre Ó Cairealláin (strength and conditioning coach). They were brilliant at putting your mind at ease. When you’d start worrying that something wasn’t right, that something was off they’d look at it be telling you it was normal, that it was all part of the recovery process. So when it might flare up or you were finding it hard, it was great to have them around.”

What was the hardest period in his recovery?

“The first few weeks after the operation were pretty basic – extending the leg, getting a range of motion and so on. Then it was back to jogging and building strength, that’s when it got tough. Around this time last year was probably the hardest period.

“I found training on my own a major struggle. When you are away from the group and training alone, I found it hard. There were some sessions where I wouldn’t finish them. When you don’t finish a session and you feel shit. Mentally that was very difficult, there was about a two-week period where that was happening, so I decided I had to do something. I rang our physio Paddy O’Brien and told him I was struggling with training on my own. I asked him if he would supervise my sessions, just to have somebody there and he then suggested training with Seamie – who was coming back from a bad injury. So we trained away together in a local gym and that was a major help for me.

“Around the end of October then or start of November I met Cairbre, our new strength and conditioning coach. He brought a group of us in training then, other lads coming back from injuries and pre-season. We were in Thurles and that was a real lift because you felt you were kind of back involved again with the group.”

After a positive six-month review back in February, Maher participated in an internal game on February 15th. A month later he features as a substitute in the Allianz league quarter-final against Dublin.

“I was very nervous beforehand, I went on with about 20 minutes left and it felt like starting all over again. Luckily the first puck-out that came my way I caught it above my man, that settled me and got me back into it straight away. The result was disappointing, we lost to Dublin that day, but personally I was delighted to be back playing and to have come through the last 20 minutes or so.”

It wasn’t long before Liam Sheedy was asking the Borris-Ileigh man to man mark some of hurling’s top marksmen.

“I did enjoy the season, but I wouldn’t say I didn’t feel any pressure. I did feel pressure in some of the man-marking jobs I was asked to do, essentially picking up the opposition’s main man. But more than anything I looked on those as a confidence booster, that I was the one chosen to do it, trusted by the management to do it.

“It was a very enjoyable year, it was a joy to be part of the group.

The year isn’t over for Maher and his club-mates yet as they have a Tipperary SHC final against Kiladangan to look forward to next Sunday (November 3rd).

“It’s been a good year for the club. We were in the final in 2017 as well but we kind of came out of nowhere that year, we were a young team, we’d been nowhere the year before. We met a very strong Thurles Sarsfields team that year and were comprehensively beaten.

“Then 2018 was a bit of a disaster because we had a lot of injuries, along with me we had three other starting players out injured and we just can’t afford to be without four starting players. So it has been a very positive season for us so far this year and hopefully now next week the ghosts of a few years ago can be put to rest.”

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