Seamus Callanan has seen both sides of the coin.
He says waking up on the Monday morning after an All-Ireland final as a champion is the best feeling in sport.
But he's also woken up in Dublin following an All-Ireland final defeat and he knows how empty and lonely that feeling can be.
Tipperary have made a habit in recent decades of winning the Liam MacCarthy once and then disappearing. In fact, this is the first decade since the sixties that they’ve managed to win more than one All-Ireland.
This time around though, they are intent on building a dynasty and a key will be retaining the MacCarthy Cup - something they haven’t done since 1965.
“We’ve been in the hotel a couple of years when we’ve lost and you can’t compare the two of them,” said 28-year-old Callanan, who won his first All-Ireland in 2010.
"It’s a special feeling and you want to feel that every year so the focus half-shifted to that straight away.”
When Tipp beat Kilkenny on the biggest day of the year in 2010 and followed it up with an All-Ireland Under-21 title in front of an ecstatic home crowd at Semple Stadium six days later it looked as though the Premier County were going to dominate.
That didn’t happen for a variety of reasons, with many players since admitting that they lost focus. That is unlikely to happen this time around, as Callanan explains.
“Every year when you set out you want to be the All-Ireland champions and when that doesn’t happen it’s obviously a major disappointment,” said the man who has been nominated for RTÉ’s Sportsperson of the Year for 2016.
“It’s all back down to hard work again. It’s down to applying yourself. The draws for the League and Championship have taken place already so that gives us a focus.
“It doesn’t be too long coming around so you have to make sure that you’re tipping away, keeping your body right and you’re ready to perform again come January.
“The club [Drom and Inch] got knocked out of the Championship ourselves in October so I took a few weeks off and then went back training myself, three or four times a week. A bit of running and a bit of gym work to keep the body ticking over,” he said, speaking to RTÉ Sport.
“It’s gone so competitive now that I don’t want to be the one to lose out on a jersey next year. No matter what achievements we’ve had this year, it’s a level playing field for every county and for every player within our set-up.
“I’m going back to challenging for my jersey again in the New Year and I’ll have to earn it. I want to be in a position when we go back in January that I can perform straight away and hold on to the jersey. I want to get an edge on a few of the lads trying to get my place.”
So the bad news for corner-backs in the south is that Callanan isn’t taking time off in the New Year as he sets his sights on preparing for Tipp's Liam MacCarthy defence.
“I’ll play any game at all. January is when you can win the jersey and once you have it you can hold on to it for the year,” he said.
Beyond that he’s eyeing another strong League to help him continue the form in 2017 that saw him score 0-13, nine from play, in Tipp’s All-Ireland final win.
Callanan was once known as a 'Thurles hurler', only able to produce the goods when playing in the Munster Championship.
"You can do a great job for the team in other ways"
He’s long since put that myth to bed, having enjoyed back-to-back stellar seasons and the only award he has missed out on now is the Hurler of the Year trophy, which controversially went to Waterford’s Austin Gleeson this time around.
Callanan revealed that he feels full of confidence every day he goes out - and he adds that a serious performance doesn’t necessarily have to add up to a massive score beside his name.
He said: "I’ve been feeling that way for years.
“After the Galway game (in the All-Ireland semi-final) people were saying to me that I was quiet, but I’m a marked man as well.
"If my job is to take a guy out of position and create space for someone else, that’s a brilliant job done for the team.
“It doesn’t have to always be scoring nine or ten points, or three goals. You can do a great job for the team in other ways.
"The maturity we’re at now means we understand that and play for the team.”
