The king is sidelined and the pretenders to the throne are, if not yet lining up, at least shuffling into position. On Sunday, a foot injury will deprive Kilkenny of their talisman when Henry Shefflin will watch from unfamiliar territory as his team-mates take on Offaly in the Leinster championship.
It constitutes the first championship game Shefflin has not played in since making his debut in 1999, a sequence of 62 successive games that has yielded nine All-Ireland winning medals and the status of hurling royalty.
Shefflin, who injured initially last December and then again last month in damaging his metatarsal just as he was regaining fitness, is not yet in the mood to abdicate. Sunday’s opener and perhaps the rest of the provincial campaign may be an elusive dream, but he is fully intent on resuming his position on the team come the business end of the championship when the days start to shorten. He’ll be back.
“I was in to see my surgeon (on Monday) and he’s happy enough with the progress. He told me it would be six weeks with a stress fracture and that’s what it’ll be, before I do any training. I know it’s slow and that’s the diagnosis.
“The concern with a stress fracture is that you go back and do too much on it too quickly and it just reoccurs. It’s definitely four, five, six weeks away at this stage,” admitted Shefflin, who was speaking in Croke Park yesterday at the launch of Centra’s fourth year as an official sponsor of the All-Ireland hurling championship.
Shefflin remains positive. “Once you’re doing something, going to the gym or pucking the ball against a wall. The year is not gone from me and, please God, Kilkenny can be still there (once he regains fitness). I can’t do too much, because if I do too much I’m going to set it back. It’s a balancing act that I have to get right.”
"Obviously it will feel a bit strange (not playing), I'm going to be itching to get out there. But, as I've said, I've known for a while. Sunday will be the first time to be experiencing it so I don't know how I'll react . You'd love to be playing, but I've been lucky to get so many up."
Part of set-up
Come Sunday, Shefflin – although not playing – will be very much a part of the set-up. He will travel on the team bus and crowd into the dressingroom where Brian Cody, not long back from heart surgery, will talk the talk.
“Everyone was delighted to see him back, I suppose it just feels normal again to have him back there.”
If a Kilkenny team without Henry Shefflin in the championship team list is an unusual happening, there will be no change in the approach that the Cats will bring to their visit to Tullamore.
“I think it’s going to be a very tough championship. The Leinster championship alone, if you look at the way things are going to go if it pans out, three seriously tough matches and this first match on Sunday is going to be as tough as any of them.
"We have a great time for Offaly. I remember playing them when I started out my career (in 1999) when Brian Whelahan was still playing. It's going to be a tough test, themselves (Offaly) and Wexford. I'd definitely know from my past experiences, they are a very strong traditional county, especially Dublin going down to Wexford's back yard (on Saturday) and we going up to Offaly's back yard. It makes an awful difference to a team that might be seen as underdogs, to have that in your own back yard, the atmosphere that creates and the buzz it will give those teams will be massive."
To back up his view that Offaly won’t be any pushover, Shefflin makes the point that Offaly teams have contested the last two All-Ireland club finals and “not the traditional teams we’d expect from Offaly, so they can hurl.
“They are a great county for what they do in football and hurling. It’s going to be a tough test . . . for Offaly, it’s a massive opportunity, a big game.”
