Injuries have left Dermot Earley in daily pain

Kildare legend Dermot Earley admits a catalogue of old football injuries leaves him in pain on a daily basis.

The 36-year old was plagued by serious knee and back problems in the latter part of his county career before retiring in mid-2013.

He twice underwent operations to repair cruciate knee ligament damage before a back injury that also required surgery convinced him to retire.

Two-time All Star Earley admitted he blames himself for putting off knee surgery initially and then injuring his back while weight training to build up support for his knee. He said the end result is he feels pain in his knee every time he pushes off it to walk and doesn’t run ‘unless I have to’.

“The knee is solid, it’s secure but I do have pain in there, on a daily basis,” said Earley. “The pain comes from just walking, it’s there where I push off. There were other complications but it all stemmed from a cruciate injury.

“It was no-one’s fault but my own. You want to be there, involved. I was 31 when I hurt it first, in training. I tore it but it was still attached and they told me I’d probably need an operation but I kept playing. It culminated then, a minute into the All-Ireland quarter-final against Meath (2010), that’s when I really did the damage.

“It was okay at the start, I have some pain for 10 or 15 seconds, then it would go away. But in 2011 and 2012 when I got back, that was really painful. There was a lot of managing it, a lot of painkillers.

“Which is one of the reasons I’m not playing now. At 36, you’d like to think you could contribute to the club but it’s not worth the pain any more.”

Earley predicted inter-county careers are ultimately going to shorten because of the demands being placed on modern players. He suggested the recent retirement of Dublin’s Bryan Cullen at 30 is going to become the norm and that the average county career could shrink to as ‘seven or eight years’ in the near future.

“I would suggest the county lifespan is going to seriously reduce,” he said. “That’s inevitable. When I started out, I wasn’t in that particular training regime. It was still two or three nights a week and you still had time to socialise and live your life, go to college and enjoy it. Just think the way it’s gone, it’s now 24/7, especially when you get into the season. I can’t see players doing it for more than seven, eight years. That would be the max.

“I think we’ll see more of retirements like Bryan Cullen at 30. Aaron Kernan was the same, at 30. We’re going to see a lot more of it.”