Bloodied Shane O'Donnell didn't catch Brian Lohan's stirring half-time talk v Kilkenny
"It just kind of burst open," recalled the 2013 All-Ireland final replay hat-trick hero. "I think it must have got through to the artery. I don’t understand exactly how it happened."
Shane O'Donnell wasn't listening to Brian Lohan as he rallied his Clare troops at half-time against Kilkenny.
O'Donnell was among the Banner men who looked possessed when the All-Ireland semi-final re-started and, ultimately, they found a way to reel in the Cats to book their place in the decider for the first time in 11 years.
But the Ennis man, whose 2013 final replay hat-trick against Sunday's opponents Cork has gone down in the annals in Clare, had more a pressing matter on his mind than Lohan turning up the volume in the dressing-room.
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He had suffered a deep finger injury 10 minutes earlier, when going up to catch a ball and getting a smack of a hurley on the back of it.
"It just kind of burst open," recalled O'Donnell. "I think it must have got through to the artery. I don’t understand exactly how it happened. Obviously the ball kind of hit the front and the hurley at the back kind of pinched it. It must have just caused enough pressure to cause a lot of damage.
"It’s funny. Everyone was saying, 'Brian must have said something great at half-time'. I don’t think I heard anything Brian said, with three medics around my finger trying to stop the blood coming out."
They steri-stripped and wrapped the wound a few times. Coming off what not an option in O'Donnell's mind. “I was going to go out anyway," he said. "I had played the last 10 minutes of the first half with blood freely coming out and I could still play. So I was always going to go back out. But I would have preferred if I could have had a bit more control of it."
Seconds after the re-start, he caught a puck-out and the wound reopened. "My hand was just completely red. It was just blood everywhere. There’s not much you can do at the same time. Fifteen or 20 minutes into the second half, I ended up going for a throw ball with Cian Kenny. He said to Liam Gordon, the ref, ‘he has to go off.’
“And Gordon was like, ‘he can’t do anything about it. It keeps bleeding’. And I was like, ‘that’s pretty accurate'. There was nothing I could do, basically."
O'Donnell took the game to Kilkenny from the half-forward line, and that's where he will start against Cork in Sunday's All-Ireland final. Once a terroriser of full-back lines, it is the position he has evolved into over time.
“I think it was very organic," said the 30-year-old. "I can’t exactly remember how it came about that I ended up at wing-forward instead of corner or full. It was probably just through sheer competition and places because there are a lot of very good forwards in our panel at the moment.
“So I realised I was going to be out in the half forward line. I got a heavier hurley. I started just playing and training a little bit differently. That happened over a period of a couple of weeks. Then it just kind of stuck.”
The spotlight has remained on O'Donnell but he insists he takes the pressure in his stride.
Actually, it's a case of 'pressure, what pressure?' after what he has been through in recent years. "Personally, no," he said, when asked if his own personal expectations have increased over time. "Possibly because of the trajectory of my career.
"I probably came close to retiring a couple of years ago because of that injury to my head. It gave me kind of a free shot at everything that came after that. So I feel no pressure, really. I would have always put a lot of pressure on myself before, and I do coming into the games. I become obsessed with getting the most out of myself but in a strange way, I don’t feel any pressure associated with that.”
With that comes a certain lightness of feeling in All-Ireland final week, especially after finally getting over that semi-final hurdle.
"We’d dealt with those same kinds of questions and concerns after losing to Limerick in the Munster final again this year, there were a lot of disheartened players and it was so disappointing," O'Donnell explained. “Ultimately if we had lost that Kilkenny game, what would have happened? The world wouldn’t have ended either.
"It was only getting into this week and realising how big an occasion it is that has kind of reminded me of what it was like 10 or 11 years ago when we were dealing with this before. Just a fantastic occasion to be in. Just delighted to be here.
“The only thing that is similar is the opposition and the size of the occasion. It never stops being something you’d be so delighted to win. It would certainly be a nice way to...I won’t say bookend, because I don’t plan on retiring this year.
“But it would be a nice way to stagger - winning one at the start of your career and then one towards the end. If we win, it will be one that I can categorically say I will enjoy a lot more than I did back in 2013."
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