Taking a step back into the days of his childhood in the family home, Tommy Walsh shared with Thursday's OTB AM his memories of back garden hurling! 

However ferocious the intensity of Kilkenny's training sessions really were during the heyday of the 2000s, it will have come as no shock to Tommy Walsh. He already possessed a firm understanding of inhospitable playing surroundings.

"In our hurling garden," he recalled of the set-up they had when he was growing up in Tullaroan, "the sideline was three bands of barbed wire.

"We had cattle at that time and an electric fence wouldn't keep them out of the garden so my uncle and father put barbed wire up when we were very young.

"Not alone were you jostling trying to win the ball, you were trying to avoid the barbed wire. Of course, it was a badge of honour if you fell on it, walking around with a bit of blood trickling down your head.

"You were a tough man then."

9 March 2003; Tommy Walsh, Kilkenny, is attended to by team doctor Tadhg Crowley. Picture credit; Ray McManus / SPORTSFILE *EDI*

As was on show during Tullaroan's All-Ireland club final triumph earlier this year, the long-awaited success was a family affair for the Walshes.

Between Tommy, Martin, Pádraig, Shane and their father Mickey on the sideline, for the most decorated of them all there came a feeling that this meant more.

"I'll give away eight of them," remarked Tommy Walsh of the All-Ireland medals he won playing for Kilkenny to Off The Ball years before Tullaroan's win, in return for one of the club medals Ollie Canning possessed.

When he finally crossed that line, Walsh needed to bargain no longer. On Thursday's OTB AM, the inimitable Tommy Walsh revealed that this most precious success had been forged in a back garden.

"Look through any successful club stories and usually there's a massive input from large families," he suggested. "A normal guy or girl goes down to the field two or three times a week to train, whereas if you're in a family of four or five you're training every day!

"You'll be out in the garden from four-years of age up until you're about 23 or 24 playing games."

A phenomenon familiar to people right across the country, OTB AM was granted the privilege of following Tommy Walsh down this most enticing of worm-holes.

27 October 2019; Tullaroan's Tommy Walsh celebrates with his brother Padraig. Photo by Ray McManus/Sportsfile

In rural Kilkenny, the Walshes weren't starved of opportunity for ideal playing surfaces. Barbed wire aside, they were well set for space.

"We had a garden and the hurling garden," he recalled, "but they were both the front garden so I don't know why we called one of them a good garden because they were both the very same. We weren't allowed hurl on the good garden anyway.

"It was a basic enough game we played then, really. It wouldn't matter if you only had two lads there.

"My cousin Richard lived down the road, Stephen lived up the road who is a coach now with us and we had the Breens down below. You just came into the garden and whether there was two of ye there or 10 of ye there, ye made a match.

"If there was one good lad you might even it up by having two or three extra lads on the other team. There could be five or six years in the difference."

The arena on which he played without any concern for his conditioning, you just went and went until you could do no more.

"When you're out in the back garden tackling for two hours you wouldn't even think about it," recalled Walsh of the intensity that this activity established. "You don't think about your fitness or giving up, you just do it!

"The only referee is ye, like. But Daddy used to come out as well. You'd referee them fairly too, but there were often fights in games."

Oldest among all those usually playing, Walsh found himself in an invidious position from time to time.

"I was obviously the oldest and if you won a game all you'd have is, 'replay, replay, replay'," he explained. "You'd have to play them then every two minutes later until they beat you.

"Then they wouldn't play you for two or three days and you'd be left bulling until you got a chance to go again."

All has since gone quiet in Walsh's back garden, however.

"They all moved away so I've to do it with my son now," explained the former Kilkenny half-back, "but he doesn't really want to come out at the moment so I'll have to wait a few years.

For the time being, at least.

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