Friday was a day of comebacks: DJ Carey for his club, Henry Shefflin for Leinster champions Kilkenny and Mick Fanning for Leinster champions Louth.
It was with some relish that we learnt of the return to action of the so-called Master Sheff, King Henry the Great, in the Kilkenny team to take on Wexford in Saturday night’s Leinster SHC semi-final in the south-east.
It cast our minds back 12 months or so, to a time when Kilkenny were the greatest team in the history of Irish sport, their Drive for Five dream was not only still alive but odds-on to happen and Henry was busily surpassing the last of the great names of the past to become the highest scorer in the history of hurling.
Then, the Cat God’s mortal joints betrayed him, he was forced to watch from the sidelines as the ship ran aground and Lar became the biggest smallest first name in the game.
And then something strange happened. Fresh from the mental fatigue of being forced to remember things from last year, another behemoth from the Great Land of Kilkenny poked his hurl through the mists of time and we were thrown even further into the past.
Because Henry may have been the main story in the morning, but he was jealously surpassed in the afternoon by his old comrade in the Cats attack.
We’re not saying that perhaps he was spurred on by the need for publicity in the wake of that nasty letter (and somehow turning said publicity into hard cash), but within weeks of it fluttering nonchalantly through the letter-box, DJ Carey has announced that he will be dusting off the hurl, helmet, red glove and dictionary of GAA clichés and getting back into the game.
It’s just with his club Young Irelands, and it’s just with the juniors, but still, as they say in Tesco, every little helps.
Fanning to the rescue
While hardly on the same grand scale as Calvary, it was a good Friday for comebacks with Mick Fanning airdropped into the Louth team at centre back for the Leinster semi-final against Westmeath.
Fanning has been off sunning himself in places like Bondi Beach over the last few months, but he clearly brought to the Southern Hemisphere a pair of runners, a stopwatch and an aversion to drink, because he’s been deemed fit enough to take his place in the pivotal defensive position for the Wee County as they get the defence of a peculiarly trophy-less title under way against Carlow.
Fanning’s fellow Antipodean nomads Brian White and John O’Brien remain absent, but another player with Australian connections, Brian Donnelly, does play at midfield.
Donnelly spent two years with Adelaide Crows and as he prepares for his first Championship start for Louth, he will be hoping to take his first steps on the road to being this year’s Marty Clarke – smooth, mercurial and bound for a return flight to Australia as soon as he figures out what he’s been missing.
