Over a 12-year inter-county hurling career with Kilkenny, Walter Walsh won three All-Ireland championships, memorably scoring 1-3 on his debut and winning man of the match as the Cats beat Galway in the 2012 final replay.

The Tullogher–Rosbercon clubman played for Kilkenny footballers over the summer, and he recently turned out at full-back for New Ross in rugby, so he has more experience than most of sports clubs and how they communicate with their staff, players and fans.

After retiring from hurling last year, he established and developed SocialTies with Brendan Kavanagh and edtech Olive Group, the operator of Grinds360, the grinds website in which agricultural science teacher Walsh was an early investor.

SocialTies builds localised digital platforms for communities such as GAA clubs and schools that act as a central hub for content, communications, fixtures, results and other information.

As Walsh explains it, fans and stakeholders would typically turn to the club website to find fixture details, seek out content relating to the club on Instagram and Facebook and find live score updates on X (formerly Twitter).

The idea behind SocialTies is that all that information is fed into one place, but clubs can also post exclusive content such as competitions, articles and podcasts and generate revenue through advertising.

SocialTies platform is developed at no cost to the club or organisation, there's no subscription model for users, and advertising revenue is split between the organisation and SocialTies.

"Businesses are sponsoring Kilkenny GAA or buying signs in Nowlan Park, whereas this allows businesses to advertise digitally, and 50 per cent of ad revenues go directly back to the organisation," Walsh says.

"Not only are they getting eyeballs, and analytics back from us, they're also supporting local, helping to grow the local community.

"In this case, it's Kilkenny GAA, and 50 per cent of advertising goes directly to the Kilkenny centre of excellence, which is, I suppose, behind a lot of other counties around Ireland."

Kilkenny GAA is the first major organisation to have its own SocialTies app, Kilkenny Cats Social, which has been downloaded more than 5,000 times since launch in March.

A SocialTies platform for GAA Handball is due to launch in November, and Walsh is targeting similar-sized organisations with thousands of supporters and stakeholders for expansion, although he thinks it is viable for organisations "big and small".

Walsh is set to pitch schools ahead of the new school year and will speak to other GAA county boards during the close season, and he expects it will be a compelling proposition to boards that are often desperate for new revenue streams and ways to grow their organisations.

"The idea was to get those [SocialTies apps for Kilkenny GAA and GAA Handball] working really well. They're the blueprint going forward, so Kilkenny Cats Social, when we go to the county boards, they can see how successful that is," he says.

"We're looking to get schools involved, especially starting back in August. We're hoping to get a couple of pilots set up ... so it's very much early stages, but it's very exciting for the future with SocialTies and the feedback has been really, really positive."

"It's not taking from existing business or anything like that. It's really an add-on feature," he adds.

Walsh doesn't admit to having any hard targets with regard to the number of organisations adopting SocialTies over the next year, but he believes "the sky is the limit" and that the platform can be used by any community or organisation, in Ireland or abroad.

"We're very optimistic with it," he says. "I'm not going to put a figure on it, because it has the potential to be so scalable."

Walsh suffered a groin tear playing for Kilkenny in a league match versus Offaly last February, which kept him out of action for 17 weeks. He returned for the Leinster final, but remained a bench option during the Cats' run to the semi-final, where they lost to Clare.

"It just took ages to come back, and it was a lot of rehab and recovery, and even a couple of months after that, my groin still wasn’t 100% at the time when I was making the decision [to retire].

"Yeah, I was able to play, but it was achy after games or sore after training," he says of the injury.

"Had I been starting and known that I was going to be a regular player the following season, it might have changed my mind a bit, but I just thought the time was right."

Having been involved in the tech start-up scene through his involvement with Grinds360, the idea for SocialTies had come to Walsh prior to his decision to step down from the Kilkenny panel.

Doing so allowed him to commit fully to SocialTies while he takes a year-long career break from teaching and his father runs the family dairy farm. (He says the absence of distraction while milking cows is good for the mind and coming up with ideas.)

Looking back at his hurling career, Walsh has some regret that he didn't add to the three All-Irelands he won by the time he was 24 and finishing on the losing side in four finals between 2016 and 2023.

"I was recently speaking to Shane O’Donnell from Clare, and he won an All-Ireland in 2013 and one in 2024. There was a nice—obviously you’d like to win more, a few more in between, but it was nice [for O’Donnell] to get an All-Ireland at the start and maybe [one] towards the end, although I have no doubt Shane O’Donnell has many years left playing with Clare.

"But for some of those Clare guys, it was nice winning, and it was interesting to hear that they’ve only played in two All-Irelands as well," he says.

"Whereas [with Kilkenny] there were seven years we played in an All-Ireland [final]. Yeah, of course I would have liked to win one near the end, but then you have to be very grateful for what I did win.

"If you think of some of the fabulous players that haven’t won All-Ireland throughout their careers, and you just have to be grateful when you think of some of the players like that."

Ahead of Sunday's final between Cork and Tipperary, Walsh is backing the Rebels, citing their firepower in the forwards and pace of the bench.

"I just think they’re the best team in the country, and I think that’s why they’ll win. They have so much talent, it comes down to that. They’re so hungry and, like, there’s so much hype with them as well," he explains.

Walsh was at Croke Park to see 14-man Tipperary beat Kilkenny 4-20 to 0-30 in the semi-final earlier this month, a thrilling match that was overshadowed by a wide mistakenly given as a point on the score board for the Treaty before the GAA issued a correction after full-time.

Some observers called for a replay after Noel McGrath's phantom point -- and a sublime goal by debutant Oisin O'Donoghue -- put Tipp four ahead late on.

Kilkenny subsequently had a goal chance cleared off the line as they pushed frantically to close the gap.

"Look, it’s disappointing as a Kilkenny supporter and it definitely affected the way Kilkenny were finishing the game," says Walsh.

"There’s no other way to know the score other than to ask the ref, but it was so frantic, there’s no way of asking. You look up at the scoreboard and you see the score and you know, do we need to get a point or a goal? It’s as simple as that.

"I don’t want to be making excuses as a Kilkenny supporter or anything, but it’s just that if I had been involved... it would have been so hard to take as well because it’s something that shouldn’t have happened.

Ultimately, Walsh believes the schedule didn't allow for a replay, and the difference in the match was really the four goals Kilkenny conceded.

"Before the match, you would have thought that Kilkenny would have got the goals, but that’s the way sport goes."

Photo: Walter Walsh. (Pic: Supplied)