Premier midfield powerhouse on summit again after torturous road back from injury

The siege mentality, it’s a must wear this season. Pat Horgan had one after the Clare game when he spoke of the new penalty regulation.

“To be fair, they brought it in because of Nash, which I thought was highly unfair. It’s just like anything to stop us — that’s what it looks like. Sure, we proved them wrong today but it might be different the next day.”

James Woodlock, following the win over Dublin last month, donned another.

“It’s only ourselves and whoever is in that dressing room that is paddling this canoe. There was no one here for us in the last couple of weeks after the Limerick game.”

The midfielder, who missed that game with a chest infection, expands now on his argument. “I’m as honest as the day is long, like most people. We just go in and we train hard every night. We train because we want to play, so I just think we put in so much work ourselves and maybe it’s not always appreciated. We’re not looking for a clap on the back or anything but it can be hard going.

“Everyone else has a life to get on with and we’re just training the whole time in there.”

Woodlock’s is no run-of-the-mill them-against-us attitude. He’s used to being in the minority. When he suffered a horrific leg break in Drom-Inch’s 2009 county final, it was he and he alone who had to make the long road back. Running back for a ball, he had all his weight on his right leg intending to move left when Padraic Maher ran into it with his own right leg. Woodlock crashed to the ground. Both the tibia and fibula had been smashed. His father James saw the extent of the injury afterwards and passed out with shock.

In and out of consciousness, when he was alert he was screaming in pain. He was operated on the following day in Waterford where a steel rod was inserted into his leg and a nail driven through his ankle. There’s still plenty in the limb that makes airport security a hassle.

Working as a garda in Kilkenny and breaking horses in his spare time, that all had to stop. For the next five weeks, he was consigned to the couch with his leg kept in an elevated position to ease the considerable pain. He lost two stone in the process and then put it back on and more as he recovered.

“I had no doubts I was going to come back. But when I went for the first operation I was told I would never hurl again. It was so bad. It was the tibia and fibula in the right leg about three or four inches under the knee. One was shoved down beside the other because I had all my weight on it so it broke in seven places.

“When you are on a morphine drip at home and you can’t go anywhere, what do you do? Once that was all off, I used go to the gym at six o’clock in the morning near The Source (Arts Centre) in Thurles before anyone else was there. When the cleaners would open up I’d be there. My two friends would bring me in, and I did jogging in the pool, it was all upper body work and I was twice as big as I am now. Obviously, when you go back running you lose it all again, I was double the size, I was a stone and a half heavier.”

Paudie O’Sullivan is in the red corner tomorrow but the pair had suffered a similar injury, the Cloyne man’s misfortune happening in a club game in April 2013.

“I was chatting to him last year when he broke his leg. I couldn’t do anything for him and nobody could do anything for me at the time. You either come back yourself or you won’t come back. You have to put in the work yourself.

“I remember cycling 20 miles a day during the winter. The leg that had broken, I tied it to the pedal of the bike with a shoe lace and cycled with one leg, all uphill, to try and build the muscle back. I had years of building up the muscle and it was gone within three days of breaking the leg. It just faded away, it was just bone, it took me a long time to get it back right, it caused problems with my other leg because all the weight was on that.”

The injury meant he missed Tipperary’s All-Ireland success of 2010. “That was the hardest year,” the 28-year-old acknowledges. He wasn’t in the panel in 2011 either although the club won the county title later that year. When he returned in 2012 his start against Limerick in the Munster quarter-final was shortlived as he was substituted at half-time.

Tomorrow marks his first start in Croke Park since the 2009 All-Ireland final — he came on a substitute there against Kilkenny in that forgettable 2012 semi-final. He’s bullish about his return there.

“Apart from 2012 Tipp have always performed well when they got to Croke Park, the biggest stage.”

He believes his own game is in a good place too. “I’m doing the grafting, I don’t mind doing any kind of grafting for the team. If I can get the ball to someone else who can put the ball over the bar like Seamie Callanan or whoever else. And I think we’re not getting enough ball into them. If you get enough ball into those boys, they’ll cause havoc.”

After so much of it was caused in his life, he’ll be looking to create his own brand of mayhem on Cork.