In his mid 20s and quite visibly in his sporting prime Cian O’Sullivan shouldn’t have to worry about wear and tear and hip surgery and not being able to kick a ball since last October. Part of the worry is what he’ll be like in another 20 years.

What is certain is that O’Sullivan is not alone: he’s the fourth Dublin footballer to undergo hip surgery in recent years, and reckons at least part of it is to blame on the increasing demands of the intercounty game. Even more worrying is that O’Sullivan admits he would likely have played on with the injury had his club Kilmacud Crokes progressed through the Dublin championship.

For now, at least, O’Sullivan believes he’s got the issue under control, having undergone surgery at the Santry Sports Clinic at the start of October. He’s been undergoing rehab ever since, and hopes to return to Jim Gavin’s playing panel towards the middle of next month, certainly before their league campaign concludes.

“It was something that had been at me for the last two years, and I’d just been managing it,” explained O’Sullivan. “I had a bit of time over the winter, where I wasn’t playing, so best to get the operation done and get the issue seen to.

“Because I had been playing, game to game, and training in between was pretty limited in what I could do, because the hip was just flaring up the whole time. A lot of physio was required, and getting a lot of massages. I really was limited in what I could do on the training pitch, and then just progressively I was getting worse.

“The day of reckoning came the day after the Donegal game (the All-Ireland semi-final, which Dublin lost), as I was struggling to walk down the stairs. That was probably when it was at its worst. I played a bit with the club there after, and it just kept on flaring up. So I decided in October to get the operation done.”

Fellow Dublin footballer Eoghan O’Gara, also in his mid 20s, required double hip surgery last year, and O’Sullivan admits there is a trend: “Yeah, they seem to be in fashion these days. I don’t know what it is. Two or three of the lads had the same thing on the Dublin team. But they’ve had very positive feedback from the operation so I’m hoping for the same.

“I don’t know whether it’s training techniques, or intensity of the training, or a long season or whatever. My diagnosis was wear and tear. But I was asking the surgeon why that was there, and he said there could also be hereditary issues, stuff like that. So it could be a mix of things – the training that you’re doing and the last number of years, the heavy season, so a mix of reasons.

“The cartilage is basically worn down, so they go in and they shave a bit of the bone off and try and fix up the cartilage a bit. I was four weeks on crutches, then start back with a bit of swimming for a couple of weeks. At the start of December I was able to get back into the gym and start doing a bit of weights, on the legs.

“So I haven’t kicked a ball since October, although if Crokes were still in the championship, I would have questioned whether to have the procedure or not. So there wasn’t an awful lot of pressure there.”