Hunger to play with his friends has kept Billy McCarthy coming back 

When Thurles Sars' unlucky star Billy McCarthy went down, Semple Stadium gasped

BACK IN BUSINESS: Billy McCarthy takes a rasp on the knee from the hurley of Drom & Inch’s Stephen Nolan during the Tipperary SHC quarter-final. Pic: Diarmuid Brennan/Sportsfocus.

As Billy McCarthy absorbed the rasp of a hurley across his strapped right knee and fell on Sunday, there was an audible gasp among the Thurles Sarsfields contingent in FBD Semple Stadium.

This was a scene they had witnessed too many times before. The Mid-Tipperary semi-final against JK Brackens in July 2018 when in scoring a goal a late tackle dislocated his knee and tore both his anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments. The 2020 county SHC round three game with Moycarkey-Borris when he ruptured the ACL for a third time having also done it during his lengthy recovery in 2019 from the first episode.