SÉAMUS HICKEY IS in good spirits despite the fact he’s standing just yards from the spot where his 2013 season came to a premature end.
Hickey tore his cruciate ligament in last August’s All-Ireland hurling semi-final and his last memories of Croke Park are being stretchered off the field in the early stages against Clare.
The Murroe-Boher man was operated on at the Sports Surgery Clinic in Santry five weeks after that game and, since then, has been focused on a recovery that took a step up recently when he was able to tog out for his club in a county championship match, something that put all his hard work in the gym to the test.
“I came through 60 minutes there. When it gets to this stage it’s about getting confidence and confidence in your knee comes from minutes.
“You can practise twisting and turning all you like but if the ball breaks one way in a game it’s reactive stuff so that’s what I’m dealing with now at the moment.”
His return to the Limerick set-up wasn’t as easy though.
“I got a few minutes at the end of a challenge match there recently, I was running around a bit headless. I was just so excited to be back.
“Being held out of something for so long you just, you develop a new appreciation for it and I was just so eager to get on the ball, my first thought coming on to the field was ‘I need to get on the ball, get on the ball.’”
The fact he continuously encounters players who, unfortunately, have been through the same thing has made the mental side of recovery that bit easier for Hickey.
“You appreciate what you lose when you get an injury like that. Where you play on the field and whether you’re selected or not doesn’t become that big a deal as long as you can get on the field at all.
“It’s funny that the game is what it is, there are so many people who I could have talked to and did talk to over the time about the injury.
“Like even Denis Moloney, who was on the Limerick panel and he did it in 2006 when I made my debut coming on replacing him because he tore his cruciate.
“He was brilliant, actually, he texted me straight away when it happened and he was good to talk to about it after that.
“It’s like a club you become a part of now at this stage. You talk to a fella and it’s, ‘ah, you got it done as well’.
Having been out of the game for so long, Hickey is keen to look forward to Limerick’s Munster Championship semi-final against Tipperary on June 1. However, it also gave him a chance to reflect on just how lucky he is that a cruciate injury is no longer automatically the end of a career.
“You appreciate that you have to do a lot of work to get back to where you were at so there’s that level of appreciation for the game and for other people who had to go through the same thing.
“I do have an admiration for Colm O’Neill and what he’s been through. To look at a guy like that who’s been through multiple cruciates and the work he put in, there’s so much work involved in trying to get back to where you were.
“I’ve a huge admiration for anyone who goes through it now, I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”
