Austin Gleeson withdraws from Waterford panel due to injury setbacks

The 2016 hurler of the year is taking time out to consider his options

Waterford hurler Austin Gleeson had a good club championship with Mount Sion but has suffered a number of injury setbacks. Pic: Eóin Noonan/Sportsfile

Austin Gleeson has withdrawn from the Waterford senior hurling panel.

According to team sources, the Mount Sion man, 30, has been hit with a number of injury setbacks and is taking time out to consider his options.

Gleeson, the 2016 hurler and young hurler of the year, enjoyed a good club championship in 2025 as Mount Sion reached their first senior county final in three years. Gleeson produced impressive displays against Fourmilewater and Roanmore which indicated he was getting back to his best.

However, achieving full fitness has been a difficulty for Gleeson going back to 2016. Part of the reason he opted out of the 2024 inter-county season was to rediscover his appetite for the game having previously contemplated sitting out 2023.

In February 2024, he said: “The winter of 2015, we were in the U21 championship in Waterford and the game kept getting called off every week because of weather, so we were training consistently through the winter, through the Christmas. That probably gave me that base of fitness going into 2016 which, being completely honest, I probably never had again after that.” 

Gleeson returned to county colours this past season when he marked his comeback as a substitute in the penultimate Division 1B game against Westmeath. He appeared as a late replacement in three of Waterford’s four Munster SHC games.

Meanwhile, Waterford forward Paudie Fitzgerald has undergone an operation on his shoulder and is expected to be sidelined for four months.

Fitzgerald incurred the injury in the closing stages of Kilrossanty’s Munster intermediate final defeat to Kilbrittain in late November.