This could be the last time for Henry the Great

It could be the last time. As so often with All-Ireland hurling finals and Henry Shefflin, speculation cloaks the unflappable Ballyhale man.

He has acknowledged this can't go on forever. In Kilkenny's years of unassailable pomp – say on the September afternoon six years ago when they eviscerated Waterford – it was difficult for anyone in the hurling world to believe such days wouldn't always carry an amber hue and that Kilkenny's rangy hero would not always be there to lead the way. But he has said publicly the end of his Kilkenny career is "very, very close,"

So tomorrow’s All-Ireland final may be the last time.

For the past fortnight, the main whispers have been about whether Shefflin would start his 14th straight All-Ireland final or whether he will be asked to continue in this summer’s character role. Injuries have chased him like a pack of dogs for almost half a decade and this year is no different.

But after the Limerick semi-final, Brian Cody was adamant the senior man could start: that the reserves of fitness had returned. Shefflin was always a demon for hard work, for training graft.

“For certain he has 70 minutes in him,” Cody said. “He has 73 or 74 minutes He has definitely.”

They won’t start Shefflin for sentimental reasons, only because they believe it could work. With Shefflin and Kilkenny, there has always been a necessary contradiction at work.

Profound and silencing

“Henry is Henry,” Cody has explained on innumerable summer afternoons when the pale man has produced something profound and silencing to keep Kilkenny winning – as he did with that spellbinding, furious second half of the 2003 final which reversed a Corkonian winter for the MacCarthy Cup.

Henry is Henry: the phrase is the most simple acknowledgement of the fact Shefflin is a once-in-a-lifetime player.

And yet he can’t be treated any differently. It is not the Kilkenny way. Shefflin wouldn’t want special treatment – and wouldn’t get it anyway. So the conclusion is simple: if Kilkenny ask their talisman to start an All-Ireland final as a substitute, then that is what he will do.

For a serial starter, a player who has been an automatic selection on team-sheets for almost 15 years – that shift in roles cannot be understated. Kilkenny have lost men who couldn't or wouldn't deal with being asked to drop to the supporting cast. It is common phenomenon and one of the toughest aspects of Gaelic Games.

"Some players aren't interested in it, don't like it," says Noel Lane, the former Galway forward who was content to play in cameos when required. Lane was a starter and a two time All-Star between 1977 and 1986, when he says he was psychologically burdened with the disappointment of captaining the Galway team which lost the 1986 All-Ireland to Cork.

But he hung around and scored immortal final September goals for the maroon in the finals of 1987 and 1988.

“After 1986, at 32 or 33 my touch was off and I lost form and would probably have willingly said bye-bye at that stage. But management felt it would be good to keep a few older players on board. I loved hurling and representing my county and felt fit enough and good enough to play a role.

“But Henry Shefflin . . . you can’t compare us . . . I was an ordinary kind of player and Henry is the greatest player I have ever seen. And I am not just saying that. When he started off, he was an ordinary enough minor and Under-21 but then under Cody grew into an extraordinary player . . . his unselfishness and skill and motivation. He has everything.”

Shefflin was still in the first flush of youth when Lane managed the Galway side which famously scythed through Kilkenny in the 2001 semi-final. At that stage, DJ Carey was still the figure who haunted the thoughts of opposition managers.

"Henry wasn't singled out by us. Gregory Kennedy was on him and did well and was sent off then and we dropped Fergal Healy back and just raised our game."

Shefflin had won his first All-Star the previous season but didn't feature in the 2001 ceremony, his last omission before a stunning run which acts as a neat chart for his influence in the game; consecutive awards from 2002 until 2009 and then a further two in 2011 and 2012. Hurler of the Year awards followed in 2002, 2006 and 2012, the grace notes to those nine All-Ireland titles and 13 Leinster championships.

Those are the condensed honours of a hurler for whom being the central focus became second nature. So the idea of being kept in reserve demands a taxing shift in perspective.

Additional carrot

“Ah, it is; it is huge,” agrees Lane. “And a lot of players aren’t prepared to do it. I suppose Henry has the additional carrot of going for the 10 and that is a huge incentive, just to hang in there. There might have been a lot of things that haven’t gone his way but ultimately when you sit down over the winter and you have gotten over injuries and you have the greatest manager of all time and the greatest team of all time and to be part of that . . . it is a huge incentive.

“And also, he is still good enough. It is a huge transition because you are on the periphery when you are used to being in the centre and the whole nervousness that comes with starting. It is not the same . . . a part of you does feel like a bit player or surplus to requirements but at the same time you know you may or may not have a big role to play.”

It is worth remembering just how much effort Shefflin has made to preserve his unbroken run of final appearances. He left at half-time in the 2007 final against Limerick with an injury which was afterwards confirmed as a ruptured cruciate knee ligament: Kilkenny were so imperious that afternoon the second half was a procession but Shefflin faced almost a year of solitary rehabilitation just to come back into contention.

Three years later, he was struck with another serious championship injury in the All-Ireland semi-final win over Cork. It happened when he was doing what he has done thousands of times.

“If I caught the ball, it would have been fine,” he told this newspaper the following winter as he journeyed through rehabilitation. “I’d have braced myself for the landing. It came out of my hand and I tried to look at the ball and I can still feel the vibration when the leg went down. I could feel the impact from the sole of the foot coming up through the leg.”

Before that match had even finished, Shefflin had left the stadium, bound for the cryotherapy unit in Wexford alongside John Tennyson.

A Croke Park steward had offered them a lift and his car radio was broken: for a time, they didn’t even know what was happening in the match.

The weeks afterwards saw him making regular trips to Ger Hartmann’s clinic in Limerick, where he stayed overnight to facilitate gruelling evening and early morning sessions which would build the muscles around his wrecked ligament and enable him to play.

He started for what was a hugely anticipated rerun of the 2009 final between Kilkenny and Tipperary, which swung on a penalty of murderous precision driven home by Shefflin.

A year later, he had no such luck. He lasted for 12 minutes of a final in which Tipperary would not be denied, winning so handsomely many predicted the power base had drifted across the border to the Premier County.

“I was selfish, I suppose,” he said afterwards. “I just worried about myself; I put so much focus on getting myself right that I wasn’t focusing on the team.”

By the following September, he struck 0-7 as Kilkenny re-emerged to reclaim the Liam MacCarthy from Tipperary.

In the autumn of 2012, Shefflin produced a second half performance of extraordinary poise and leadership to haul Galway back from the brink of an emotional and overdue All-Ireland. It went to a replay. Kilkenny played with customary poise and ravenousness and Shefflin won his ninth winner’s medal.

He was not fit when Kilkenny were knocked out of last summer’s Leinster championship by Dublin and was called upon with five minutes remaining on the famous night in Nowlan Park when Tipperary were sent packing in a fiery qualifying match.

But 2013 was not to be: Shefflin was sent off against Cork after receiving an innocuous second yellow card and again the obituaries were written on a great team. Again, they were wrong.

Regular substitute

But maybe it was during last year that Shefflin made the transition from leading man to whatever he is now: it seems odd – or just plain daft – to think of Shefflin as a regular substitute. You think of his arrival against Limerick in that semi-final for the ages, a dark and elemental battle lit with quality on an afternoon of driving summer rain.

Limerick hurled out of their skins and in Shefflin’s arrival on the field with 18 minutes to play they recognised a key moment: Kilkenny playing their trump, recognising it had come to this.

“He created a whole lot of kind of tensions in that game,” says Lane. The Limerick defenders were temporarily thrown by his presence.

It seems a long time ago now since Galway and Kilkenny played out a startlingly dramatic draw in Tullamore but Lane won’t quickly forget another Shefflin illumination. “He got one of the greatest points ever scored that night. Joe (Canning) came down and got the equaliser but those were two of the greatest points ever scored.”

It was a reminder of his capacity to nail the big scores, of his tendency to stride longer and more confidently when the stakes are biggest. If they hold him in reserve tomorrow, it will be strategic. It will be to ensure he is there at the finish.

“I know people would love to see him start but realistically, he may not,” Lane says. “But I do think he will make an impact. If they are down and he comes in and pulls it out of the fire . . . you know, it is fascinating. He is an extraordinary hurler and Kilkenny man.”

Shefflin has said the end is close. He said he will think about the future only after the club championship. If Kilkenny win tomorrow and Ballyhale become county champions over the coming winter, Shefflin is up for captaincy. That may be enough to entice him back. But there are no guarantees.

Every year, Brian Cody “goes away and thinks about it” and always comes back.

Some year he won’t. And similarly, the day will come when Kilkenny supporters scroll through the match programme only to discover how shockingly strange their team looks without Henry Shefflin’s name decorating it somewhere.

There is a small chance he will slip away without the ovation his greatness merits.

This may or may not be the last time and the uncertainty means his appearance should be savoured all the more.