Shefflin: Cats cool despite changes

JAMES ‘Cha’ Fitzpatrick was the first to walk before Christmas, Eddie Brennan followed him soon after and PJ Ryan handed in his notice just two weeks into the New Year.

Even in a Kilkenny dressing room, such a cluster of exits create a stir.

Every dynasty is born with the Achilles heel of a sell-by date and, with Michael Kavanagh said to be mulling over his inter-county future, this great Kilkenny team is slowly shedding its old skin while maintaining its quest for honours.

Henry Shefflin admitted yesterday that the three recent departures would leave a major void in their wake but the Ballyhale man doesn’t see them as the first steps in this Kilkenny side’s inevitable journey into transition and old age.

“I don’t think so because the next bunch of the lads are probably 29 or 30 and there are a lot more years left in the likes of them,” said Shefflin, at the announcement of the GAA and GPA partnership with PwC in Dublin’s IFSC.

“There’s not many of my age anymore, that’s the problem,” he laughed. “Derek Lyng, Martin Comerford, Eddie, PJ: there is a group of us that is dwindling quickly. I know the lads aged 29 or 30 have a lot of hurling done but they look after themselves very well.”

He understands why the three departed. Ryan was 34 and had given 10 years to the panel. Fitzpatrick decided life on the edge of the carousel wasn’t for him after a career spent mostly at the controls but Brennan’s was a surprise after his input in last September’s final.

Shefflin too will be marked absent for the foreseeable future having undergone surgery prior to Christmas on the shoulder injury picked up on club duty with Ballyhale and he admits it has been hard to face into such a long hard road again. The eight-time All-Ireland winner spent similarly lengthy stretches rehabbing in 2007 and 2010 after a pair of cruciate injuries and, although he hopes to start ball work again in March, he wrote off any possibility of a league appearance yesterday.

It’s only 10 days since he ditched the sling after an operation which basically stitched his left shoulder back together and, as these things tend to, the effects of the injury have spilled beyond the boundaries of his playing career.

“I’d have a screaming baby on the ground and I wasn’t able to pick her up. That was difficult for a couple of weeks but workwise I was lucky enough. I already had an automatic car for my knee so I was able to drive a bit but they will be giving me an ambulance next!”

His sense of humour is clearly still intact. Just as well. This being his third off-season rehab, the joke in the Kilkenny camp now is that “it has to be 15 degrees before they see Henry” but it hasn’t always been so easy to find the bright side. He nearly fell off the chair when the specialist first told him the extent of the problem — he thought it was a relatively minor affair — and the week after the December 7 operation was a “dark place” as he sat incapacitated with his arm slung across his chest. He knows enough about these things not to circle any return date on the calendar but return he will. He may be 34 this month and time may be ticking but Shefflin would like to pull the curtains himself rather than have them fall down on top of him.

“I don’t want something to finish it for me. I want to finish it for myself. But sport can be cruel. I’ve a very good backroom team and I’m experienced in that I know what I need to do. It’s different this time because it’s the shoulder so it might be a bit of a novelty.”