All-Ireland winner relishing unlikely shot at club glory this weekend
Now 34, his left knee has seen eight surgeries and has little cartilage left, so he intends to make the most of this.
An All-Ireland football winner with Cork, Ciaran Sheehan didn’t envisage returning to Croke Park at the back end of his career with a junior hurling club.
But then Sheehan’s sporting life has taken a few unusual turns. He’s best known as a Gaelic footballer, a talented forward on a formidable Cork team that won the county’s last All-Ireland in 2010.
But when AFL giants Carlton came knocking for a third time in late 2013, he decided to head to Melbourne. Sheehan made his AFL debut the following year but injuries dogged him and his career in Australia never took off.
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He played a bit with Cork again when he came back and with his club, Éire Óg, but, living in Shanagarry, from where his wife Amy hails, something had to give.
“I had the arrival of two smallies, I've a one-and-a-half-year-old and a three-and-a-half-year-old, so that changed things in terms of commitment for training and things like that,” he explains.
“I was happy to go up and down the road when it was just myself, but when the smallies arrived, it made that a bit more challenging.”
And so he threw in his lot with Russell Rovers at the beginning of 2023. He’s now captaining the club’s hurlers and they’ve gone all the way to Sunday’s All-Ireland junior final against St Lachtain’s of Kilkenny at Croke Park.
Now 34, his left knee has seen eight surgeries and has little cartilage left, so he intends to make the most of this.
“I never thought I’d be getting back to Croke Park to be totally honest with you. It was it was a fairly special kind of achievement in my mind, but to be able to actually represent the club, represent, I suppose, my family now, we are a Shanagarry family, we are a Russell Rovers family, but I would never have envisaged getting back to Croke Park.
“I am fairly restricted in comparison to the younger days, my body has taken a fair whack I suppose over the years between mixing sports and everything that goes with it. So to be able to tog out at the weekend and bring some sort of value is a huge kind of motivation for me.”
Sheehan is certainly no novice hurler. He hurled at Croke Park for Cork minors and could easily have gone on to play for the seniors.
“I got a couple of calls from a couple of senior managers over the years. Denis Walsh and Gerald McCarthy at various stages to come in but I suppose at the time I actually had got a phone call from Conor Counihan first. And it was literally that, he called me first.
“We won an All-Ireland under-21 football title in 2009 as well so it was kind of a timing thing. We had, you know, a good strong team there, the Cork footballers had progressed really well and were competing at that period of time as well. And I also had a player I really looked up to in Danny Goulding who was a clubmate as well at the time and wanted to follow in his footsteps a little bit as well.”
When the door was opened for dual players by Counihan’s successor Brian Cuthbert in 2013, Sheehan was Australia bound and so couldn’t take up that option. But given that he won an All-Ireland and football gave him the opportunity to experience a different lifestyle down under, it looks like he made the right choice.
And the decision to transfer to Russell Rovers is paying off now too as they become the first of three Cork clubs to compete in All-Ireland hurling finals this month, with Watergrasshill and Sarsfields to follow in intermediate and senior respectively.
“I’d be optimistic enough about what’s ahead for Cork hurling and I think that is a reflection of the three club All-Ireland finalists but I do think that finals are there to be won and I suppose you’re quickly forgotten if there’s three teams up there and three come out without any medals. It’s about executing now over the next couple of weeks so hopefully we can represent the county and do the county proud and bring back the title.”
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