HE’LL GET through the rest of the season alright, but Ken McGrath fears he’ll need both knees replaced sometime after his hurling career comes to an end. McGrath has admitted the deterioration in his knee cartilage is such that replacement operations appear inevitable, although the versatile Waterford hurler has other things to worry about for now – such as the Munster final showdown with Cork on July 11th.
“The knees are bad, and I can’t really do anything about it,” said the 32-year-old McGrath, who is 15 years now on the Waterford senior panel.
“It’s just wear and tear over the years, and there is not much cartilage left in either of the knees. I just have to manage them the best you can, try to pick and choose when you can train and when you can’t train.
“In certain games you wouldn’t feel it at all. With the hard ground, with the adrenaline going. It’s only afterwards you have to ice them and so on.
“It’s all the training and playing over the last 15 years but I got a good run out of it, so I can’t complain too much. The knees will never be as good as they were three or four years ago. But I’ll definitely get this year out of them and we’ll see from there then in the winter.”
Knee replacements aren’t exactly common side-effects of a career in sport, but McGrath’s problems reflect the increasing commitments of modern hurling within the confines of an amateur game.
In the meantime, he is taking every precaution to ensure the cartilage damage doesn’t worsen, under the attention of Limerick sports injury specialist Ger Hartmann. Yet someday an operation will be necessary. “I think that’s the plan for it down the road,” he said, “but I suppose I’m too young to worry about that now. We have more things to worry about like a Munster final than getting knee replacements.”
Fortunately for McGrath his knee problems aren’t exactly curtailing his fitness – although he is still short match practice. He was introduced late in Waterford’s Munster semi-final win over Clare on the June Bank Holiday morning – just as RTÉ co-commenter Michael Duignan declared McGrath’s knee injuries had looked like ending his career – and promptly hit a crucial long-range point, his reaction afterwards going some way towards demonstrating his frustration at being kept on the bench for so long.
“It was hard the last day,” said McGrath. “Look, I suppose if you are going to be happy sitting on a bench you might as well hang up your boots at this stage. Once your frame of mind is right when you are coming on I think that is the main thing. No player wants to sit on a bench. You can only pick 15 at a time.
“I only had two months’ training under my belt. I hope to be pushing harder for the Cork game, and we’ll see from there then. I’d be confident enough if I’m asked I’ll go out. If I don’t last 70 I don’t last 70 but I suppose I have three months under my belt. I feel confident enough I could last a fair amount of the game anyway.”
McGrath admitted too his best hurling days are probably behind him, but that’s not saying Waterford’s best days are over yet; winning an All-Ireland is still the goal just as it was when McGrath made his championship debut in 1996.
“At this stage it could be hard to get up to three or four years ago, when you were at your peak, but I still feel like I have something to offer the team. But I think when we came in 1998 and didn’t win the All-Ireland people said it was our last chance and that was 12 years ago. In 2002 they said the same. We believe it every year, that there is an All-Ireland in us, to be honest. I suppose the three of us (McGrath, Tony Browne, and Dan Shanahan) wouldn’t be there if we didn’t think we had something to offer the team. The main thing is we still enjoy it. We all love going training, meet the lads, have the crack and make a go of it.”
McGrath was speaking in Dublin at the launch of the 2010 Guinness Rising campaign, which like last year features four special hurling events.
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