Kilkenny's former Hurler of the Year Michael Fennelly is facing a race against time to be fit for the county's All-Ireland qualifier first round the weekend after next.

Fennelly sustained a serious Achilles tendon injury in last year's All-Ireland semi-final replay against Waterford in Thurles and only returned in recent weeks. Despite hopes that he might be available for the Leinster semi-final against Wexford, which Kilkenny lost, the injury flared up again.

“I’d be under pressure,” he said at Monday’s launch of Centra’s #WeAreHurling campaign.

“It’s a race against time alright. I’m just waiting for it to settle and to get back training and to see what happens from there. I’m not really putting any dates on it. We just don’t really know with it. I’ll do a bit of running later on this evening and see where it goes and hopefully push on from there.

“I played a club game five weeks ago at this stage, things were looking better alright, more promising, but just aggravated it then maybe a week or so after that. That kind of put me back, maybe two weeks before the Wexford game, so that kind of ruled me out of that.

“Yeah, still waiting on it to settle down. It’s aggravated at the minute, it’s inflamed, and you know an inflamed Achilles, it just needs to settle basically. So that’s what I’m waiting for at the moment and trying to manage the training load.”