Last All-Ireland final may prove costly or Richie Power

No player retires without some regret and physical scars and then there’s Richie Power. Even after winning eight All-Ireland hurling titles with Kilkenny he’s got some lasting regrets and one too big not to mention.

His left knee has practically disintegrated, completely devoid of any cartilage tissue so that bones are essentially grinding off each other. He’s still holding out some hope of returning to play with his club Carrickshock – even if only in goal – although truth is Power is not sure he’ll ever run again. He’s 30 years old.

Official retirement

His injury problems have been known in Kilkenny for years, but still his official retirement in January came as a surprise: now, after some further reflection, Power is still unsure if the hasty efforts he made to play in last September’s All-Ireland win over Galway, limited to a vital 14-minute cameo at the end, were ultimately worth the price. Effectively that effort ended his career.

“I don’t feel bitter,” says Power, “but regrets definitely. If I had been told last January (2015) that my knee wasn’t in a good place and that taking 12 months off might prolong my career for another four or five years I would have done that. That wasn’t the case.

“I continued to stay going and I probably pushed my body too much, too hard, to try to get back for an All-Ireland. To put my body through what I did last year to get 12 minutes of an All-Ireland final, that’s probably a regret. Fair enough, walking off the field I didn’t think it was going to be my last time in Croke Park, but it turned out that way. If I had have taken 12 months off, who knows, it might be better than it is now. But we’ll never know.”

With that he recalls the exact moment when his surgeon (Tadhg O’Sullivan) told him his career was finished: “To be honest about it, there were tears in the room. It was dropped into conversation rather than being sat down face-to-face. After the operation the surgeon came in and he dropped it in to conversation, ‘your playing days are more than likely over’. I sat there for a few minutes thinking ‘did he actually say that?’

“And there was anger, there was disbelief driving back up the road. I rang our own team doctor, Dr Tadhg Crowley and asked him to ring Tadhg, because they’re very good friends and to ask him why he came to this conclusion.

“He rang me back late that Tuesday night and more or less told me ‘Look, it is the right call,’ and that if I continue training at the top level for maybe the next year or two the likelihood is the knee would just break. So you’re looking at a knee replacement at 32 years of age. No one wants to face into that.”

Power was speaking in his ambassador role for the 2016 An Post Cycle Series, set for various locations this summer, and now with added significance: he’s taken to the bike to help rebuild fitness and leg strength, especially given the fear may never run again.

Yet he also admits his knee problems were chronic, always on his left side, and which required six operations in his 15 years playing with Kilkenny at all grades: “I got my first operation when I was 16, a keyhole operation, when I was training with St Kieran’s College. And at that stage I was doing a lot of hurling. You were probably playing under-16 with club, colleges, county, minors club, county, under-21 club. There was an awful lot going on but it’s no different to what the underage are doing today.

“And they took cartilage out of my knee, when I was 16, which they don’t do now, they try and reattach it. I was told the minute they took cartilage out of my knee it weakens the knee. So maybe my problems started when I was 16, I don’t know. But in fairness when I graduated past under-21 you really only had two teams: your club senior team and your county senior team.

‘Three operations’

“We were never over trained. I don’t know if you call it bad luck or the fact my problems started when I was 16 and the knee was gradually getting worse as the years progressed. The three operations in the space of 10 months last year didn’t help.

“So I certainly think players have to be monitored, and playing more than two grades is definitely not on. I think the likes of the training and weight training has to be specific for guys 18 upwards. The changes that they’ve made, I don’t know if they’re going to counteract these issues, and it’ll be interesting to see over the next couple of years.

For more information on the cycling series see www.anpost.ie/cycling.