Shane O'Donnell: 'If I survived the warm-up then I would play'

HAMSTRING INJURY: When Shane O’Donnell felt his hamstring tear at training last Tuesday, he immediately ruled himself out of the decider. Picture: ©INPHO/Ryan Byrne

A “terrible week”. An emotional rollercoaster. Waking up every morning and your first thought is whether you are going to play any part in hurling’s biggest day. And the same thought continuing to corrode your thought process hitting the pillow that night.

When Shane O’Donnell felt his hamstring tear at training last Tuesday, he immediately ruled himself out of the decider. And even when a MRI the following day showed a “mild, 1A” tear, he still put his chances of making 3.30pm Sunday at only 50%.

For the first 48 hours after suffering the injury which jeopardised the final involvement of hurling’s form player, O’Donnell did nothing. Nada. Zilch. His sole preoccupation was to ice the left hamstring on the hour every hour for two days solid. And that he did, religiously and relentlessly.

From there, tentative footsteps were taken to find out where exactly the hamstring was at. A bit of bridging, long level holds. For all the rehab and threshold exercises undertaken, though, O’Donnell had long decided that the defining test would be the pre-match warm-up.

“If it wasn’t an All-Ireland final, there would have been no point [trying to play], but I made the decision a few days ago, regardless, that if I survived the warm-up then I would play,” O’Donnell said at the Clare team hotel on Monday morning.

In the opening five minutes, he found himself giving chase to Shane Barrett. There’s Cork pace and then there's Barrett. Not an advisable chase with a less than secure hamstring. O’Donnell bowed out of the footrace because to do otherwise would have seen him bow out of the decider.

“I couldn’t commit to the run because it could have went and it was too early in the game. I started calling over Adam (Hogan). It was maybe playing on my mind a small bit earlier in the game. There was no point in the game where I was, 'yeah, I feel great'. It was a terrible week.

“I kind of got caught in a ruck at one point, trying to rise a ball, and someone came on to the back of me. I fell to the floor and felt a shock through it.

“It was constantly there. I wouldn't say it held me back at all, but it was in the back of my mind thinking, each time I sprint for a ball it could be my last, which I was happy to go with and see what happened.” 

All summer O’Donnell has been defying dexterity through his ability to trap possession hurtling at him at ferocious pace at the same time as the opposition’s outstanding man-marker is hugging him rash-like. On Sunday, O’Donnell defied his hamstring.

When Clare found themselves hanging on at 1-8 to 0-4 in arrears 15 minutes in, it was O’Donnell who created the goal to belatedly press start on the Banner challenge. He clipped their next two points. The gap back to two and all because of a man who five days earlier was convinced he would be a final spectator.

“Thought I was out. Then maybe back in. All this going on. The emotion was just extraordinarily high during the week and then to get out there and just be able to experience that yesterday.

“Tuesday evening, I thought I was 100% gone. Went and got an MRI scan on Wednesday lunch and then found out an hour later it was a 1A tear and I had a 50% chance of playing, depending on how it healed.

“Then like that, just oh my god the emotion of thinking I was gone, then having a chance, and still not knowing, and waking up every morning and being like…” 

O’Donnell, over the past 11 years, has dealt with and come through the most unenjoyable mania that followed his 2013 hat-trick and, far more seriously, his potentially career-ending concussion. This hamstring setback, with the destination almost within touching distance, would not best him either.

“It’s incredible. It’s so hard to put it into words,” said the 30-year-old of adding a second Celtic cross.

“We were talking about it a bit this morning already. There are so many years where you wake up this morning after a semi-final or whatever the last game might be and just total, bitter disappointment, and you have to just get over that.

“Even in the last year or two, the years are just, you feel like everything is going so well. You feel like you have a really strong panel and you kind of question what you need to get over the line.

“With that in mind, it’s just absolutely incredible. It’s actually surreal to the point that I don’t know if….it’s not sunk in and it’s just like, yeah, the correct emotion is not really coming across.” 

The morning after the 2013 replay win, O’Donnell was approached by a handful of sports writers in the foyer of the winning team hotel, just as he was in the breakfast room of the InterContinental Hotel at around 11am yesterday morning.

Eleven years ago, a “mass mob” of still-delirious supporters encircled O’Donnell and his interviewers. Yesterday, only one Clare supporter interrupted the chat. He'll enjoy this week in a way not possible first time around.

“It turned into a mass mob just by having a conversation standing somewhere for a few minutes. So it was just like that anywhere you went. It wasn’t particularly enjoyable so I'm really looking forward to really enjoying the next few days now.”