Henry Shefflin: Honouring a true hurling great

Should Henry Shefflin per chance not bid farewell to his inter-county career today, the following can be dismissed as the musings of a man who presumed too much. 

But then no excuse should ever be needed to pay homage to the most decorated, most dedicated hurler of his generation and beyond.

The timing of this expected announcement in the week of a relegation play-off will be lost on the few. Life without Shefflin is set to begin in the most inauspicious of circumstances. An announcement had to come, though. As he said himself, it’s not just he who has grown tired of the “will-he, won’t-he” circus. Rather let the cloud pass than hang over Sunday’s game.

When Brian Cody spoke some years back of Kilkenny’s ordinariness being their greatest strength, he didn’t single out anyone. To do that would have defeated the purpose of his point. But the case in point was Shefflin. First up, best dressed, more often than not it was only kitman Denis “Rackard” Coady who was at training before him.

Nowlan Park may be Cody’s lair but Shefflin had the keys to it. Literally. His jeep would be regularly seen in the stadium car park on nights Kilkenny weren’t training as he squeezed in work in the team’s gym inside.

It was there and in the fields behind his home in Kiltorcan where Shefflin renewed but also rehabbed himself after his six operations from October 2007 to May last year. Golfers on the Mountain View course, part of which back onto his house, would liken his efforts, whether they were threshing through long grass or intense pucking against the gable end, to montages from the Rocky movies.

“We’ve tried to tailor Henry’s programme but it’s difficult because he just wants to be training all of the time,” said trainer Mick Dempsey last September. “Henry has the habit of training really hard and doing a lot of work on his own.”

Rupturing a cruciate twice was cruel when damaging one was enough but the shoulder operation in 2011 was the injury that almost floored him. It certainly proved the most frustrating, as he would admit later, but then he made such light of it 10 months later with a ninth All-Ireland title and a second hurler of the year accolade.

Sources close to the Kilkenny camp speak of a unique bond between Shefflin and Cody fortified by their common steely single-mindedness. Beginning as senior manager and senior player together, that was their secret language.

Their parting of their partnership will be a poignant one. If Cody didn’t have enough selectors already, Shefflin would likely not leave the dressing room on the manager’s watch. Were he made kingmaker, who else would he choose to replace him?

Throughout, Shefflin applied himself with grace but he wasn’t above losing his cool with referees. They were infrequent moments, though.

The quiet dignity with which he left the Thurles pitch after being sent off against Cork two years ago was consistent with how he generally carried himself on the field of play.

Stories of Shefflin’s modesty are well known around his county.

A few years back, two Mayo men approached a Kilkenny board official at an All Stars night about the chances of Shefflin visiting a sick child. The ears of the man in question must have been burning because as the trio spoke, he happened to walk past. Called over, he informed them he had only seen the child a few days earlier.

Between last September’s drawn All-Ireland final and replay, he honoured a commitment albeit discreetly to attend a club function.

Shortly after leaving the stage, he was handed an envelope. As he left, he was seen presenting it to a child in a wheelchair.

Letters were written to newspaper editors praising both Shefflin and Tommy Walsh for signing autographs on the pitch long after Kilkenny had lost their Leinster semi-final replay to Dublin in 2013.

When requests were made for use of the Liam MacCarthy Cup after All-Ireland victories, he never once abused his position to claim it ahead of another player.

Shefflin might have held the crown but he never wore it.

Unlike his peer Christy Ring, we are fortunate that we can remind ourselves of his greatness with a few taps of a screen. As if we need it but there is never any harm in revisiting. Not at all.

Whether it’s today or whenever, the end of Shefflin’s Kilkenny career merits all the column inches and airtime it will receive.

To have watched him was to have witnessed history.

To have witnessed history was to have admired him.