His Ballyhale Shamrocks and Kilkenny career has been littered with winners medals and injuries, but Michael Fennelly isn't calling time on it just yet.
Now 34, the all-action midfield general has retired from the intercounty scene on the not inconsiderable total of eight All-Ireland senior titles and nine Leinster ones.
It's questionable whether he'll get to eight Kilkenny club championship triumphs with Ballyhale, but Fennelly may yet return from his latest operation, this time on his knee, which he had hurt in a club game last year.
"It was probably always there and I was putting more and more damage on it," he explained. Fennelly waited until after winning a fourth All-Ireland club championship in March before going under the knife.
"I thought it was a bit of cartilage that needed to be tidied up, but it ended up being a horrendous job because there's way too much damage done on the cartilage," explained the three-time All Star.
"I had to get holes drilled in my knee to try to regenerate a bit of scar tissue, to protect what's left there basically.
"That turned from a four-month injury, in terms of being fully back, to six or seven months now at this stage.
"I literally haven't done anything for the last four months, just rested, let the knee heal as much as possible and try now to get back doing a bit of gym work and get back to a bit of normal health first of all.
"I'll see then how I'm fixed after that, really. But that wasn't predicted.
"I said to myself, 'To go through that craic again...I'm sick of it'. I was on crutches for about five weeks.
"The surgeon said, 'I want you on crutches for eight to nine weeks'. I was like, 'I can't go on crutches for that long'."
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