THE WORST of it for Henry Shefflin was that it was so mundane, so unpass-remarkable. He played the Kilkenny championship semi-final last November against O’Loughlin Gaels and at one point got nailed with a shoulder when he was off balance. He felt something pop in his left shoulder when he hit the ground but didn’t pay it any heed. He played until the end, played again in the county final against James Stephens and then again in the replay.

All the while, the shoulder was giving him trouble but nothing serious. A few darts of pain while he was playing but they always passed pretty quickly.

When the season was done, he said he’d take a quick trip to the surgeon to see if anything needed to be jimmied into place. At worst, he figured he’d have a few weeks of rehab to get it right. This was at the start of December so all in all he reckoned he’d be back and bouncing by the time Kilkenny got going in the New Year.

Not so. The cartilage that surround the ball and socket joint in his shoulder had been completely ripped away. Those darts of pain when he was playing was actually his shoulder popping out and back in. He was essentially going to have to get his shoulder stitched back into place and was looking at another six months on the sideline.

“It was frustrating,” he says. “A sickening blow to be honest. When it first happened I thought I’d just be taking a bit of rest and I’d be grand.

“But once I got the news it was going to be six months rehabbing and I was going to be in a sling, it was a sickener. Even if I’d had a break of a year or two without injury before I did it – but two years in a row is a bit of a disaster to be honest. It was grand over the Christmas but now back to the rehabbing, physio, it just feels like last year all over again – just a different place, a different time.

“But what can I do only roll with the punches? With the cruciate I saw it coming, this one I just didn’t see it coming at all. I had a big build-up to the last cruciate so this one I remember going up to the surgeon and when he told me I nearly fell of the chair. I thought it was just a sore shoulder, I didn’t realise the extent of it. But that’s just the way it is and there’s feck all I can do about it.”

He’s only just out of a sling that he had to wear for six weeks after the operation on December 7th. He’s been getting fidgety because of the inactivity. At least with the knee injury, he could get back to doing some sort of levering and moving work quite quickly. With his shoulder more or less held in place by stitching just now, there’s nothing he can do to push it along.

It will be May before he can go into contact with it. Sitting around and idly shooting the breeze isn’t what he had in mind this winter. This will be the third league in four years he’s had to sit out through injury and though they kid him in the Kilkenny squad that it has to be 15 degrees before he lifts a hurl, the joke lasts only so long.

“The week after the surgery you are in a bit of a dark place because you can do absolutely nothing, you are very incapacitated again. But you just have to get on with it and look forward to doing something on it. With the knee I was always doing something but with this I had to give it a break.

“At home it obviously has a major impact. There is a screaming baby there on the ground I just wasn’t able to pick her up so that was difficult for a couple of weeks. Workwise I was lucky enough I had an automatic car from the time I did my knee so I was able to drive a bit. They’ll be giving me an ambulance soon.”