IT’S THE THIRD successive year that Stephen Cronin is preparing to play for Cork in the EirGrid Munster U21 football final but this game carries greater significance.
It’s not just because he captains the Rebels in Thursday night’s showdown against Kerry in Tralee.
Last August the prospect of an U21 campaign looked remote after he broke his leg in a league game with his club Nemo Rangers.
“I went up for a high ball and I came down,” recalls Cronin.
“One of my own players actually came through my back but there was a Clonakilty player already on my foot and the leg just got caught in a couple of places.
“There was actually no pain. I was lying on the ground waiting for the ambulance to come and they wouldn’t even give me morphine, because the pain level I said I was a two.
“You need a seven. I’ll know for next time! Learning to walk afterwards was a lot more painful than the initial leg break.”
After undergoing surgery, Cronin began his recovery. He broke on to the Cork senior side last summer but the management told him to focus on getting himself right for the U21 campaign.
The prognosis in December was not bright.
“Originally back in December, I was told that I wouldn’t be jogging until the end of March. I kind of thought that I was going to be gone.
“Sean Hayes and Aidan Kelleher (Cork management), they basically asked me would I be captain, they said ‘we trust that you’ll be there’.
“It was thanks to Eddie Harnett and thanks to Aidan and thanks to Brian O’Connell, the physios that basically got me there in the end.”
Harnett is an interesting inclusion amongst that list as he is currently the Kerry senior football team physio.
“It was a tough situation for a while,” laughs Cronin.
“But he’s been the family physio for 10, 15 years, (based in Cork).
“He even rehabbed my shoulder before that. We have good faith in him, it was just working away every day, hoping it would come good in the end.”
He was thankful for Cork teammates looking out for him as well.
“From November and December, it’s all gym sessions. You’d be in your own part of the gym doing your own thing, you’re eating food by yourself because you’re finished earlier and you’re gone away.
“There is no interaction with them and at that stage of the year. It is quite lonesome but the phone calls and the texts and just making sure how you’re getting on.
“(Colm O’Neill) got straight on to me when I broke my leg. You think how many times Colm has come back. been through a worse injury three times.
“That’s very motivating. He was very good, himself and Eoin Cadogan were very good to me.
“When I was down a good bit, you’d get a phone call from a lot of those fellas and that was a big thing for me. It kind of kept me feel that I was part of the senior team for a lot of the time as well.”
The injury forced Cronin to miss out last winter on Nemo Rangers county senior winning campaign.
“It was tough but it would have been a lot tougher if they’d have lost. You’d just be delighted that they won.
“Relief nearly in a way because you feel you nearly let them down if they’d lost that you weren’t there to help them out.”
But he’s been rewarded and is eagerly awaiting the U21 battle in Austin Stack Park.
“We haven’t really been tested too much (so far). Now Clare in the first half, we kind of got 20 minutes out of that.
“That was a decent test and it gave us an idea but realistically Kerry are in a different class compared to Clare and Waterford, that’s with all respect to them.
“Kerry, I think they have 10 starters that have All-Ireland minor medals, some of them have two. They’ve Jack O’Connor behind them.
“We know how good they are, all we can do is look out for our own patch, get ourselves ready.”
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