A couple of days after the All-Ireland hurling final, the job finally completed, Ronan Maher took out his phone and changed the screensaver.

“I changed it back to a picture of the girlfriend,” smiled Tipperary’s All-Ireland winning captain.

A picture of the ‘wall of fame’ at the entrance to the Thurles Sarsfields club, next to Semple Stadium, had been his screensaver.

The club honoured all eight of its All-Ireland winning captains by putting their pictures on plaques and mounting them on the wall outside the clubhouse.

And when Maher was first handed the Tipp captaincy, at the start of 2024, he put himself in a position to potentially join them.

It was Tipperary’s performance coach, Cathal Sheridan, that really got him thinking about that as a lofty but achievable goal, urging him to chase the dream.

So defender Maher took out his phone and changed the screensaver to a picture of the wall with a blank space at the end and an arrow pointing to it, where his own image would go. Beneath the picture, he had some motivational words.

“That’s one of the skills that Cathal Sheridan had,” said Maher at the launch of Aviva Insurance’s partnership with Clubber TV.

“When I met him in 2024, he asked me what my visualisation was for the year and it was to get my picture up and he asked me what my visualisation was as captain and it was to walk up the Hogan Stand and lift the Liam MacCarthy.

“But it was also to have my picture up on the Thurles Sarsfields wall with the rest of the legends, and to walk into the clubhouse with the Liam MacCarthy, with all my family and friends there, and that was exactly what happened on the Monday night, the centre was packed out, and everybody from Thurles and outside of Thurles was there. It was just a dream come true.”

They worked quickly and had a plaque with Maher’s image on it in place for the evening.

“It was a temporary job,” explained Maher, who posed for pictures beneath the plaque with big brother and former Tipp captain Padraic. “They’re redoing the whole thing there at the minute. It’ll be really nice when it’s done. Not many people outside the club probably recognised that it was a thing there, people probably didn’t know it was there, so they’re redoing it all now. The whole clubhouse has actually been painted and they’re painting all the signs, so it’ll be really cool to be walking into training and to see it.”

Jim Stapleton was the club’s very first All-Ireland winning captain, from 1887. Denis Maher, Ronan’s great grandfather, had been team skipper until the final but a dispute over travelling expenses prompted him to stand down.

In 1945, John Maher, Ronan’s grand-uncle, made history as the oldest man to lead Tipp to All-Ireland success, at 37.

“I always thought that Padraic should have been going up on the wall in ’17 and ’18,” said Ronan of his sibling, whose career was eventually cut short by injury. “That hits home as well, and it’s one thing you do think about. You realise you’re so lucky to be going up there. He was one of our best leaders ever to wear a Tipp jersey and in ’17 and ’18 we thought we’d be getting him up on the wall but unfortunately we didn’t.

“That just makes it more special I suppose, and the achievement that it is. It’ll take a while before it hits home. I’m born and raised in Thurles and I’ll be there for the rest of my life, so it’ll be nice to look at down the line.”

Visualisation has been a big part of Maher’s preparations for several years. Ahead of last month’s final against Cork, for example, he looked back on clips from the successful season of 2019, when he’d marked Kilkenny’s Colin Fennelly and Wexford’s Conor McDonald, recalled what had worked well for him and resolved to make it happen all over again.

“I suppose you were trying to visualise that and trying to act on it and then, in the game, make it come to life,” said Maher, who was named Man of the Match for his terrific man-marking job on Cork’s Brian Hayes.

Maher will shortly set himself fresh targets for 2026, imagine them coming to life and then attempt to bring it all to reality. Tipp hasn’t retained an All-Ireland title since the mid 1960s, when Sars man Doyle was captain, so that’s an obvious target?

“You can have that in the back of your mind,” nodded Maher. “But you have to strip it back to the small goals and that’ll all start when we sit down together. We’ll go after all those things again.”