“You’d think you’d done something great. You’d have got a point or whatever. Then you’d look down the field and the ball would be going straight over the bar down there.”

He remains captivated: “It was the best advertisement for hurling ever. Half-time, it was just: ‘Whoah… What the hell is after happening there?’ We came back out in the second-half. It all kept going, kept going. It was pure unreal.”

Yet this swell of emotion lips the dam of regret. Most of those contests did not fall Tipp’s way. Memory also chastens: “The devastation in our dressing-room after 2009 was terrible. I couldn’t understand it. Why didn’t we win that match? We played so well… We were the better team that day.” 2014’s replay was no easier to handle: “I was gutted afterwards. Shed a few tears on the field. I’m an emotional person anyway…! I looked around, knowing I might not be back here again in an All-Ireland Final. And the way it worked out, I wasn’t.”

Grief takes many forms. Retirement itself can be a grief. Shane McGrath’s take on swerves before and after 2010 implies that these Tipperary players have learned to live with disappointment via a particular emphasis. “If you don’t have the bit of luck, you have feck all,” he summarises. “I mean, the All Blacks won the World Cup in New Zealand in 2011. If they hadn’t won it, every one of them would have been shot. And they beat France 8-7. How much luck has to be involved in an 8-7? If they hadn’t won that match, what would have happened? Would it have been the end of the road for a lot of All Blacks who won another World Cup just there now in 2015?

“Kilkenny have the All Black mentality. But if you don’t have that scrap of luck, you have nothing. We have had luck. But I don’t think we’ve had enough of it. I don’t think you can win anything without that bit of luck. Not even a game of Connect 4!”

Still, McGrath stresses the lack of animosity: “There’s huge respect between us and Kilkenny. Lester Ryan couldn’t have been more appreciative of us going down for his father Tom’s funeral. The Tyrrells had their own tragedy, where they lost a cousin to drowning. We made our way down to pay our respects to Jackie, to give him a mass card. I won Fitzgibbons with Jackie Tyrrell, a brilliant man.”

Following 2014’s extraordinary encounters, McGrath feels the traditional bitterness between the counties has ceded ground to enhanced respect. “There was a different atmosphere in the stadium last year,” he nods.

Not that he has forgotten 2009, when a rising Tipp required a rousing statement: “That was some League Final! My brother Donnacha has only ever been in a row once, and it was that day. He’s a fairly steady fella. But your brother is your brother… “We thought it was bad on the field! It was far worse in the stands. Donnacha said he couldn’t believe it up there…!”

Cormac and Darragh complete a quartet.Ballinahinch, the McGrath brothers’ club in North West Tipperary, has scant form in supplying county hurlers. Even so, Shane had legs and could take a point from distance. “I got my chance with the Tipp Intermediates in 2003,” he relates. “I didn’t feature minor. I was on the minor panel up to a few short weeks before they played their first championship match, and got let go. That was devastating at the time.

“But then I gave two years with the U21 panel. And we won two Fitzgibbons while I was in LIT. I probably wouldn’t have played for the Tipp seniors except for Fitzgibbon. Davy [Fitzgerald] was a big influence, as manager. I would have huge respect for Davy. He got me to the next level.” This native is plain on certain dynamics: “I was kind of an unknown in 2003. It would have been unthinkable at the time that you’d play for Tipp, let alone captain Tipp. Realistically, who goes to see Ballinahinch play? No one.

“You go to the county senior finals. You go to the divisional senior finals. Most people don’t go see junior and intermediate teams play. There would always be banter inside the Tipp seniors on that front! O’Mahony and myself would have been the only two, for a long time, that weren’t from a senior club. The boys would be going on about senior games at the weekend. And we’d say: “We’re out as well.” And they’d come back: “Go away, it’s not a real competition!”

He muses: “So I’ll always be grateful to Babs [Keating]. Things happened after 2006 with his management and certain things went on, as is documented. But I’ll always be grateful to him for giving me a chance.” Given this context, every championship match set a milestone. McGrath remembers finding his feet against Cork in 2008: “There was a lot of talk about how we hadn’t won a senior championship match in Páirc Uí Chaoimh in over 80 years. That particular day, I said to myself: ‘Look, this is the biggest game in your career so far.’ I’d played two championship seasons for Tipp already. And played against Cork in 2006, and did fine. But I just said: ‘Right, you really need to put your stamp on it here today.’

“That was a serious game for me, because afterwards I knew I could kind of mix it with the best. I went on and had a good 2008. Unfortunately, we didn’t get over the hurdle against Waterford [in the All-Ireland semi-final]…” 2009’s All-Ireland final, beside searing disappointment, was likewise an advance. He glosses: “I was very nervous going up to it. And I was marking Derek Lyng. I’d always have admired Derek. He was the top midfielder in the country at the time. Lovely guy as well, a gentleman off the field.

“Things just fell for me on the day and things went well. That was massive, that I could do it on the biggest day of all. People only judge you on the big day. I know we lost, but it was good to come away with that sense.” McGrath’s showing in 2014’s draw with Kilkenny was a much needed boost at the time: “2010 will always be the best moment bar none. But 2014 was crucial, because after 2013 a lot of people were questioning whether I was good enough to be on the Tipp team. And I was captain in 2013…” He is frank about how difficult this honour became: “To be honest, captaincy doesn’t suit some people. And the only way of finding out is by doing it. I’ll always be grateful to Eamon (O’Shea) for offering the chance.

“But it just didn’t rest easy with me, the captaincy. Some lads are able to do it. Some lads aren’t. And I’d have to put my hand up and say I was one of the lads who wasn’t able to do it.” Hindsight rinsed perspective: “I was putting way too much pressure on myself to go out and be the best player on the field. No matter how many times people say ‘Don’t go putting all this pressure on yourself’, when you’re the captain you feel obliged to be that leader.

“I sat down with Eamon that October, and we had a one to one. He said: “Look, you’re not going to be captain next year.” And I said: “That’s fine.” And he said: “Train away yourself and come back into us in January, and we’ll see how you are. Which was grand. Because I was nervous over the one to one, and thought I might be getting dropped, because things hadn’t gone well in 2013. That day down in Kilkenny, in the qualifiers, I’d been taken off at half-time.”

Determination fed the next season: “That’s why 2014 was so important. I was marking Michael Fennelly. And Michael and myself had good old battles, down through the years. And he probably came out on top in more of them than I did. But there was maybe a few times I got the better hand of him, including that day.

“I was disappointed — I know I was wrecked tired — to get taken off in the second half. But I knew if I didn’t get to another All-Ireland Final, that if this was to be my last All-Ireland, then at least I’d played well. That was mainly for the people who’d backed me always in my home parish, and especially for my family.”

The regret is not merely about themselves. Triumph in 2010 meant wonderful experiences the players had not anticipated. Shane McGrath and Conor O’Mahony, a Newport clubman, took the Liam MacCarthy Cup to Jimmy ‘Butler’ Coffey, a Newport native who hurled at right half forward in Tipperary’s victory over Kilkenny in 1937.

“He was in a nursing home,” McGrath recalls. “We had an idea, like. But taking the cup down to him that evening and just the emotion of him seeing two local lads winning it… That was massive for Jimmy. And it turned out massive for us too, seeing his face. It was great because he died soon after. There’re so honest, aren’t they, men at that stage of their life, elderly people? They’ve nothing to prove to anyone by that stage.” He leaves it simple: “That’s my big regret. That I couldn’t, that we couldn’t as a group, get the second All-Ireland. It would have brought everyone even more satisfaction. We’ll always be remembered as the team that won just one All-Ireland. For me, we should have won three All-Irelands. That’s the way I would see it.

“But what can you do? And you can’t be dwelling too long on those things. But…” He affirms Liam Sheedy’s resignation as manager in late 2010 was crucial: “It was a massive change, big time. Look, who were the best team, bar none, hurling wise? Kilkenny. And what’s been the one thing that never changed there? Brian Cody. Never changed.

“Liam and the lads, Eamon [O’Shea] and Michael [Ryan], gave it so much. But one reason and another, the lads couldn’t continue. Everyone realises there’s a life outside it too.” McGrath believes that job commitments were a neglected factor: “With Brian [Cody] being a teacher as well… I’m a teacher myself in a national school. It does allow you to do different things, which is great.

“But unfortunately we’re not all teachers. And Liam and the lads had different career paths. And they had to go with those choices.” He specifies the momentum lost: “There was this feeling we’d missed a chance to keep it going. We’d built up a massive trust in the whole group, between 2008 and 2010. I mean, when we went away on training camps, the conversations we had with each other… I’ll never tell anyone what we talked about. I wouldn’t even tell my own wife about the sort of conversations we had. And I don’t think any of the group ever have. Or ever will. It would never be questioned, the honesty we had for each other.”

Yet he does not stint another truth: “But, as players, we can’t blame any management for not performing over the next few years.” 2011 and 2012 remain a bugbear. McGrath emphasises fact: “We won a Munster final in 2011, in 2012. Those titles are kind of forgotten, because the Tipp hurling public purely judged us on the fact we didn’t win the All-Ireland Final in 2011 and even more on the massive implications of what happened against Kilkenny in the 2012 All- Ireland semi-final.

“Ask people: ‘What happened for Tipperary between 2011 and 2014?’ They’ll all say, every one of them: ‘Ah, ye got hammered by Kilkenny in 2012!’ And the Lar following Tommy Walsh thing… They won’t ever go: ‘But ye won two Munster titles back to back.’ Which for another county would have been brilliant.” Such comments will become distant thunder. A new life beckons. How will he deal with being in the stands? “I will bite my tongue as much as I can. But if you did hear a throwaway harsh comment about a lad you’d hurled with, you might have to back him up.

“I don’t think anyone does have a clue, outside the group itself, that hasn’t done it himself in recent times at inter-county level. To the person who’s saying this stuff, you’d have to say: ‘Right, on Monday morning you’re going to go and live with this lad for three or four weeks. And you’re going to do everything he does. And then, the next time you’re watching him play, you might think twice about what you’re saying’.”

Why go now, after an All Star in 2014? This man is clear: “I want to be there for Joanne, my wife. And you can’t do that if you don’t have time. We’re together nearly 12 years and we’ve never gone on a summer holiday. If you did 50 interviews in the next 50 days with inter-county players, they’d probably all say the exact same thing.” For him, total change was needed: “As a player, you wouldn’t and couldn’t ask for time off. Because it’s not right, because you’re letting the other lads down. You’re gone somewhere, while they’re still training. A small pebble can make a big splash in the group dynamic.

“And, you know what? If you don’t want to be there, don’t be there. Nobody’s holding a gun to anyone’s head to go in training. We’ve all thought about it: god, why am I doing this? And then you have the bit of success, and you know why you’re doing it…!” Nothing surer, this side of paradise. The day before we met, Shane McGrath and family buried his mother in law, Ella Nolan. “It’s very hard on Joanne,” he says. “Her father is gone as well. And we were living with Joanne’s mother, in the home house in Templederry, this good while. She was a lovely woman.”

That bit raw, McGrath continues: “Cancer is really tough… It’s such a draining process for everyone involved. And Ella was this great support with the hurling. Like a second mother, almost. She went to every Tipp match, like my own mother, until she couldn’t go any longer.” He hesitates, steadying the memory in its frame: “She came down the morning of the Limerick game in Munster last year, and had her porridge. Then Ella said: ‘I’m sorry, Shane, I just can’t go today. I’m too tired.’ So I was glad to meet up today, to be honest, for this chat. You have to get back to some sort of normalcy. Life simply has to go on.”

We sit in mild silence for a beat, as the restaurant bustle rises a notch.