IT WILL BE a case of club teammates turned county opponents on the Semple Stadium sideline today as Liam Cahill and Willie Maher take their first Allianz Hurling League game as Tipperary and Laois managers.

In recent years, both of the Ballingarry pair seemed destined for the Premier hotseat at various stages.

It was considered a two-horse race between them in 2018 before Liam Sheedy’s late declaration for a second coming.

It was similar in 2021 except Cahill was the preferred candidate before he turned down the job and Maher was pipped at the post by Colm Bonnar.

In the end, when Bonnar was moved on after one season, Cahill’s CV was too hard to ignore: All-Ireland-winning Tipperary manager at minor, U20, and U21 with three years’ inter-county experience and a National League from his time with Waterford.

Maher, also with a minor All-Ireland to his name (2012) and a year working as a selector with Derek McGrath in Waterford before stints at Cuala and Bennettsbridge, will put his ideas into inter-county action in the Laois bainisteoir’s bib, most recently worn by Séamus ‘Cheddar’ Plunkett.

They were only separated by a year as players. Cahill the Tipperary minor captain in 1995, Maher the Tipperary minor captain in 1996, a season which ended with Maher climbing the steps of the Hogan Stand as All-Ireland victors.

With Ballingarry Gaels (an amalgamation with St Patrick’s, Drangan), they led a team from outside the Tipperary hurling elite to back-to-back county minor titles in 1994 and ’95 from centre-back and centre-forward respectively, the first club from the south division ever to win the competition. Cahill’s right-hand man Mikey Bevans was a member of the Toomevara team they beat both years in the knockout stages.

Their manager at the time, Jamesie Ivors, tells The42 they were different characters but both leaders.

“They had a great attitude to the game. Both of them were really driven but different individuals at the same time. But their goal was the same: to win and to improve.

“William would have been the more physically bigger man but Liam would have been more aggressive than William. Liam would be more vocal on the field and William was a different type of player, quieter in his voice on the playing field but off the field, both of them were very influential with us. They were very effective players and leaders in different ways.

“When they were playing, to me, they were model players. People who wanted to learn the game.

“I’m not surprised that they’re at the level they’re at now. They were always good people and came from a good background of people. They’re so good off the field as well as on it, good to have around a club, and a good example to younger players.”

Cahill went on to become the first Ballingarry man to win an All-Star in his breakout 1996 season and the first to win an All-Ireland medal in 2001 but he looks back on his career with the regret of not reaching his potential.

That has informed his management career in such a way that his focus is always to be “straight up” in dealings with players.

“I never reached the level I should have for the ability I had,” he told the Irish Times in 2020. “I wasn’t as consistent as I should have been as a player. It wasn’t through a lack of commitment, it was more that I would have benefited from a bit more guidance along the way.

“It was a different time. It was every man for himself. You come to training, you train as hard as you can, and you go home and you spend a lot of time on your own, thinking. I made so many mistakes as a young fella. I had potential, I had talent, but there were areas of my game that let me down. Some of it was from a skill perspective but it was mainly from a temperament point of view.”

Maher was classmates with two more inter-county managers at St Kieran’s College in Henry Shefflin and Derek Lyng but he never made it to the heights of the inter-county game due to injury.

In a training session at UCD 21 years ago this month, he was struck in the face by a stray belt of a hurley and lost almost all vision in his left eye.

He returned to tog out for his club in a 2005 Munster Senior Hurling League final against Na Piarsaigh of Cork, credited with playing a “huge part” off the bench in Ballingarry’s comeback to win in extra-time alongside the “so skilful” Cahill.

He was outspoken in his analysis of Tipperary’s struggles last year, telling local radio after the Clare defeat: “I’ve never been as sad coming out of Semple Stadium.

“The game has moved, we have to move with it. We have really good players and if we were set up properly and coached like that to play a modern game, I think there’d maybe be less despair and things like Sunday wouldn’t happen.”

After the League final, he spoke of what then-Waterford manager Cahill as “a very intense, committed player, really on the edge all the time, and he’s bringing all that to bear now in a management capacity”.

Ivors remembers any time they did opposition analysis, even back in those minor days and up the grades to senior, Maher and Cahill would always be tuned in.

“Knowing both of them, their coaching style would be similar in the sense they want to win and preparation would be meticulous from both of them. No stone unturned.

“They’d be very professional in their approach to preparation and all the things that go with top teams.

“I’m not a bit surprised that they went to inter-county level because their approach when they were playing was professional always.”

Ivors laughs when asked if he takes any credit for inspiring two inter-county managers of the future.

“It makes me proud to think we were involved with those two lads and where they are now. I don’t take any credit for any of that. I’d like to think maybe they learned something from me but they’re their own men.”

He reckons he was more like Liam as a managar, with a few choice words on the sideline and in the dressing room. Maher lives across the border in Kilkenny now but both still contribute to the club.

“They’ve helped out with the club since they’re retired, both of them. They took the team at different times. They were always invested in the club.

“Liam was involved with our U15s or U17s last year that were in a south final and William trained the seniors. They’d come in and do sessions. Even last year, Liam was doing training sessions with the lads while he was still with Waterford.

“All you’d have to do is lift the phone. The same with both of them. If you wanted them to do a session with a juvenile team or whatever, if they were around, never a problem. They’re good like that, giving back.”

As both managers evaluate the character of their young teams on Saturday, perhaps they’ll look for the characteristics Ivors saw in them all those years ago.