Liam Casey
By William Dunne
Young inter-county stars heading to the US for the summer has been a growing narrative in the GAA for the past number of years.
Tipperary’s Liam Casey took that leap last year, but heading to Chicago to play football was not a decision that he took lightly.
The Munster Championship was approaching by the time Casey had decided that heading stateside was a genuine prospect, and that left him in a predicament. The timing of his verdict was not ideal for both parties, but he almost felt that there was a case of now or never.
“For me personally, I just kind of wanted to get away”, Casey told GAA.ie about the decision. “From a football perspective I wasn’t playing as much as I wanted to. It might look like the easy way out that I just got up and left.
“From my point of view I wasn’t in a good place. I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing. I wanted to go and I saw it as a good opportunity to go and it was probably the only year I could go.”
Casey left alongside fellow 2015 under 21 Munster medalists Jason Lonergan and Kevin Fahey in May of 2016.
After winning a Sigerson Cup with UCD earlier in the year Casey was initially on a high, but says that a run of niggles and knocks that limited his game time with Tipperary and dulled his enjoyment of the game played a part in his decision to opt out of the panel.
“It’s a tough call because you’re training with a group of lads from November to a certain point of the year and then being dropped off," he says.
“From that point of view I wouldn’t like to do that because I felt like I was dragging along. Like, I only decided that after the league that I was going. I only realised that coming towards the end, when I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing.
“I wasn’t playing good football and everyone knows when you’re not playing well you’re not enjoying it.”
Liam Casey
Casey played for Padraig Pearse GAA Club with whom he won the 2016 Chicago Senior Championship and it's an experience that he will always cherish.
“I loved it”, he says. “It was something that you kind of have to do. Well from my point of view it was something I had to do.
“Travelling isn’t something I’m good at really and I’d like to do more of it but when you’re playing football and hurling or whatever code you are you don’t have time to do things like that.
“When you’re finished college then you’re into the working world and if you don’t have a teaching job then you don’t have that chance to go.”
Despite the fact that the adventure was enjoyable it was undoubtedly bittersweet as Tipperary’s senior footballers soared through the qualifiers and reached their first All-Ireland football semi-final in 81 years.
The midfielder admits that not being around for the footballer’s run was tough at times but feels if he stayed circumstances may well have been contrasting.
“People will ask you, ‘is it tough with Tipp getting so far last year?’ Of course it’s tough. But you have to look at it from the point that they deserve to be there.
“Things can happen throughout the year that if I was there I could have picked up a bad injury and I wouldn’t have been involved at all and that’s my summer gone.
“So there’s certain things you have to look at and you have to weigh up scenarios and decide then and don’t regret anything. If you regret it then you don’t enjoy it.
“I would recommend it. There’s only a few chances in life you can do these things.”
Liam Casey
Casey returned to the set-up last winter, along with Kevin Fahey and former captain Paddy Codd, and immediately slotted back into the starting team for the McGrath Cup.
The slate had been wiped clean after his departure last year, but he still put himself under pressure to make a big impact on his return to the panel.
“You come back in and it’s all guns blazing”, said Casey. “You try to prove that you should be back in and what not.
“You have a point to prove when you come back in. You kind of want to show what you could’ve added or what could have been extra if you were there.”
He became an integral part of the midfield during the league and snatched 1-1 in the Division Three decider as Tipperary clinched promotion with a win over Louth in Croke Park.
The Premier County will travel to Pairc Ui Rinn on Saturday to face Cork in the Munster SFC semi-final and Casey thinks that the league success will not only have a positive affect heading into this championship but have a massive impact for 2018 as well.
“It will make a big difference”, he said. “We couldn’t have stayed in Division 3 again after what happened last year getting into an All-Ireland semi-final.
“You want to be playing the top teams in the country so you have to prove yourself. So coming from the perspective that like we are going back into next year training and you’re playing better teams and you want to try compete.”
