THE CORK HURLING squad may be gearing up for next Sunday’s Munster final but for one of their attackers the current focus is on the treatment table rather than lining out on the pitch.
After sustaining a horrific leg injury in a club game in April, Paudie O’Sullivan is set to watch on as the Rebels get set to travel to the Gaelic Grounds to face Limerick on Sunday.
“It was just one of those things, a ball I’ve just gone for a thousand times in my career. I just landed awkwardly and the leg gave way.
“I knew straight away it was broken, heard the crack. For a second I was hoping it had come from somewhere else but immediately I looked down I could see it hanging there.
“Anyone who has suffered it will know what I’m talking about, or you could Google it! With a bone injury like that it depends on how quickly you heal, all those bones are different, they can heal at a different pace.
“There are two pins in knee, two pins in my ankle, then basically a steel ‘nail’ running all the way up the bone from the ankle to the knee to keep everything together.
“It was a broken tibia and fibula, the two main bones that run down through your leg. It didn’t break through the skin, thank God, wasn’t a compound fracture.
“I’ve been working with Declan O’Sullivan (Cork physio), started with him about three weeks ago and he’s certainly putting me through my paces – if there’s anything he can do to speed up the process, he’ll do it.
“It’s eleven weeks since the injury, the crutches were probably the hardest part, carrying them around everywhere, very awkward.”
O’Sullivan has described it as ‘a dream scenario’ if he is able to return to action before the end of this season and admitted it is frustrating watching on at this time of year.
“At this moment that would be a dream scenario, to get either a Cloyne game or a Cork game but I have to be realistic too about how serious an injury it was.
“In a way I don’t want to get my hopes up too much. This is probably the most frustrating time of the year for any hurler to be injured. I was looking forward to a good summer.
“They invited me up the last day (against Clare) and it was nice of them to keep me involved, nice to stay involved in the setup, the pre-match routine. It would have been harder to be at home missing out on everything. At least there was a small bit of normality.”
