Durable Kenny ‘craves’ Leinster medal

It’s from a school of hard knocks that Seamus Kenny has graduated from to experience Leinster final days.

He didn’t make last year’s decider against Dublin after tearing his cruciate in an earlier provincial game against Carlow.

As captain, it was a cruel blow on the veteran whose late game-finishing head injury had a major say in Kildare winning the previous season’s qualifier in Navan.

But after relegation and his Championship lasting just seven minutes in Dr Cullen Park, last year was a real annus horribilis.

“It’s one that I’d sooner forget. From pretty much start to finish, between everything that went on, the football side of things, it was fiercely frustrating. And then, I suppose, it was summed up in the first Championship game, seven minutes in just an awkward tackle and my season was over.”

He returned to training on January 1 and did a bit with his club Simonstown Gaels the following day before apparent disaster struck.

“About 20 minutes into the session, I buckled my right knee. And I just … I literally picked up the nearest ice pack, got into the car and drove home. That was it; I was ready for just throwing the boots out.”

Seven months of hard work looked to have been all in vain and he considered quitting, but surgeon Ray Moran cleaned up the right cartilage issue and he was on the mend again.

All in all, he’s had three operations on his right knee since first damaging the cruciate when he was 17.

The injury, that Kildare game the year before (“fiercely frustrating”, he says) and that infamous backdoor defeat by Limerick in 2008... without going near the 2010 Leinster title that has an asterisk beside it, Kenny’s had his knockbacks.

“Over the years, you’d be coming back from the likes of a Limerick or a Tipperary and you’re after being beaten in a league (game) and you’re just questioning, going ‘Why are you putting yourself through this?’

“You spend more time, nearly, in frustration … that’s when you do win, it makes it all the sweeter.

“I crave a Leinster medal, I crave an All-Ireland medal, and it’s what drives us all on. It’s there. You just want to always be chasing that goal.”

If he achieves either he and his team-mates will have worked for it but then every team who backs up those ambitions with graft do.

Kenny is staggered by the amount of work players put in but explains the rewards are worth it.

“You can do anything from six to seven sessions a week now. Because we’re in Championship mode now we’re down to four collective sessions, but the amount of work that lads do outside of those sessions is massive. It’s nutrition, conditioning, the mental side of things, analysis. It is, in a way, another job and it’s very hard.

“Gaelic footballers and hurlers live in a little bubble where you think there’s no life outside of what you’re doing because there’s so much emphasis on every aspect to get it right.

“It has to be that way if you want to be battling with the best teams. They’re at it and they set the bar so you just have to match them if you want to have a chance.”

Meath are considerable underdogs on Sunday but Kenny knows it’s not as simple as saying they only need to play to the absolute capacity of their abilities to surprise Dublin.

“The emphasis is on us and how we can get the best out of ourselves. We’re not naïve enough to think that us just going out there and playing our best football will be enough.

“There’s going to be an element of tactics in it.”