Dublin's Eoghan O’Donnell says his injury nightmare this year was a low point in his career.
O’Donnell picked up a hamstring injury in Dublin’s Leinster hurling semi-final win over Galway but was declared fit for the final against Kilkenny. However, he aggravated it within three minutes and had to retire, while he also missed the subsequent All-Ireland quarter-final against Cork as Dublin went out of the Championship.
He reflected: “I'm not going to lie, it was one of the most disappointing things I've experienced, definitely, because you train so hard to represent your county and I've been lucky enough to be involved with Dublin for a long number of years now and I've never played a Leinster final so to miss it was extremely disappointing.
“I've had this conversation maybe a million times since it happened, hindsight is great, with hindsight we would obviously know not to play but we took all the steps that we could and put in place the best system to try to get me in a place where I could add something on the day.
“I trained the Tuesday and the Thursday before the game, went through a fitness test with our physios and felt good, felt ready to play.
“What we did learn was that you can just never replicate match scenarios, that the demand of inter-county these days is just so extreme that if you're not at 100% you can't get away with it. So extremely disappointing.
“I've done a massive amount of work since with the physios to try to make sure something like that doesn't happen again because I was just so… it was so demotivating, and being missing for the lads was just so disappointing, so I've been trying to put my body in a place where something like that doesn't happen again.”
Mattie Kenny will continue as manager for a fourth season in 2022, after committing to Dublin rather than courting the vacancy in his native Galway which was only filled this week.
O’Donnell added: “I don't think that was ever a point of talking in our team. For all the lads it's so obviously clear Mattie's commitment for Dublin and his love for Dublin hurling.
“He's shown massive, massive commitment to us and we firmly believe that if there's anything he could do to get us over the line, he'd do it in an instant. So there's no question there.
“As a team we're really looking forward to having that continuity. With Covid, it didn't suit anyone but it especially didn't suit teams like us that were trying to develop a style of play and a system.”
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