King Henry - The Final Countdown

[AZOffaly]

A press conference has been called for tomorrow for Shefflin to outline his plans for this year, and it's highly touted that he's going to retire from the Black and Amber. If he does this, I'd just like to say it's been a pleasure watching him for 16 years, and his record of 10 All Ireland Medals is an unbelievable achievement. He was a bit part last year, but his determination to come back from the injuries and contribute in some way to the machine rolling on is a credit to him.

A Kilkenny Legend indeed.

[imtommygunn]

I think it's the right time for him.

One of the best ever.

[maxpower]

The fact he has a press conference announced certainly suggests he's for calling it a day, otherwise he'd just tog out at training.

In the Ballyhale run he certainly looked good enough and given 6 months puts the season by from here I thought he might have went on for one more given the experience that has been lost in that changing room.

[seafoid]

A press conference has been called for tomorrow for Shefflin to outline his plans for this year, and it's highly touted that he's going to retire from the Black and Amber. If he does this, I'd just like to say it's been a pleasure watching him for 16 years, and his record of 10 All Ireland Medals is an unbelievable achievement. He was a bit part last year, but his determination to come back from the injuries and contribute in some way to the machine rolling on is a credit to him.

A Kilkenny Legend indeed.

10 all Irelands- as many as Galway, Offaly and Waterford combined

[orangeman]

http://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/hurling/2015/0324/689391-shefflin-set-to-make-announcement-about-future/


Not many get to go out at the top. It's great to see such a legend choose his moment.

What a career !!

[seafoid]

Imagine if he announced he was going to sign for Tipp

[laoislad]

Saw him trying to get into Supermacs one night and saying to the large African bouncer on the door 'do you know who I am?'. He didn't and Henry didn't get in.
Often wonder what happened the bouncer.P45 next day no doubt.

Great hurler in fairness.(Henry not the bouncer)

[muppet]

Imagine if he announced he was going to sign for Tipp

Babs would turn in his grave!





* Not to be taken seriously

[Íseal agus crua isteach a]

The best man at my wedding was Henry Shefflins best man as well. Yet I only met him once in person and it was very brief as he was hurrying to go training.

I think if i was Henry I  would stay the championship year. All Ireland is only 20 odd weeks a way and he is in great shape. Kilkenny will only have three or four tough matches for another title so his odds look good.

[theskull1]

Part of an old hands job is to make way leave a gap for young talent to fill. The man has nothing more to prove and his talents are on the wain (time waits on no man) so why cling on?

[manfromdelmonte]

Always had plenty of other all stars around him to share the load and get the ball to him.

Great hurler though.

[AZOffaly]

He had, but in fairness Shefflin didn't need someone to get the ball to him either. He was well able to do his own heavy lifting.

[From the Bunker]

The best man at my wedding was Henry Shefflins best man as well. Yet I only met him once in person and it was very brief as he was hurrying to go training.

I think if i was Henry I  would stay the championship year. All Ireland is only 20 odd weeks a way and he is in great shape. Kilkenny will only have three or four tough matches for another title so his odds look good.

I'm sure Cody had been part of the advise to retire. This was not his decision alone.

[seafoid]

The reaction of the crowd in the replayed final last year when he came on as a sub said so much about him.

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/hurling/for-the-rest-of-our-lives-we-can-say-we-saw-henry-shefflin-play-1.2151699
For the rest of our lives we can say we saw Henry Shefflin play

Executing his skills under excruciating pressure was what set the Kilkenny great apart

First published:
Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 05:00

 

 


"Although it appears obvious now that it's about to happen, there was uncertainty about Henry Shefflin's intentions since the end of last week's All-Ireland club final.
Some in Ballyhale were convinced he'd stay on for a 17th season, buoyed by another successful All-Ireland campaign with the club. Others in the county thought that he'd be perfect for a mentoring role within the panel and at the club's annual dinner last weekend county chair Ned Quinn asked Henry to stay on and win an 11th medal.
The only one whose opinion mattered decided however that it was time to depart the county scene he has dominated for so long and who could quibble with the timing?

Henry Shefflin's decision to call time – at the age of 36, with a record 10 All-Ireland medals, 13 Leinster titles, 11 All Stars, six League titles – has been coming. Photograph: INPHO/James CrombieHenry Shefflin ready to call time on his own terms


His marksmanship, his ball-winning, his passing, his tenacity, his temperament and, perhaps best of all, his instinct for delivering the plays that simultaneously steeled his Kilkenny team mates and withered the belief of opposing counties. He worked like a demon and hit hard. He made Kilkenny seem invincible. Henry Shefflin: Mesmerising, from beginning to end

Henry Shefflin won 10 All-Ireland hurling titles with Kilkenny.
   
As the legend of his career grew the details of his comparative obscurity at minor level became commonplace and underlined that he hadn't been a prodigy, whose coming at senior level had long been anticipated.

The shaping of Henry Shefflin took place down the road in Waterford IT and was significant for a couple of reasons. Firstly it had become noticeable that Kilkenny hadn't been producing players at Fitzgibbon Cup level to the same extent as other counties and secondly WIT was taking off as a nursery for top-class hurlers.

As WRTC it had won a couple of Fitzgibbons before Shefflin's time but for three years running, 2001-03, the Hurler of the Year was an alumnus of the Waterford Institute. As he put himself talking about the college: "After minor it was like training for an intercounty team," he said. "It was an eye opener for myself and got me very fit as well. At that stage we had about 13 intercounty players on the team so it opened my eyes to the level I needed to be at to get to the top of my game.

"The standard was unbelievable. It brings your own game on and it made me physically stronger when I was starting with Kilkenny. To win Fitzgibbon you had to be a good tough team and that stood to me."

One of the remarkable aspects of Shefflin's intercounty career has been that it was parallel with Brian Cody's management over 16 years. Their first championship match was against Laois in 1999 and they were a feature of all Kilkenny's championship matches until injury destroyed the player's season in 2013.



Partnership
Their partnership was at the heart of the county's successes – principally 10 All-Irelands, an achievement unprecedented in the game – and if it appeared to outsiders to cool towards the end that was perhaps the inevitable consequence of a great playing career drawing towards the end and the accompanying – and at times abrupt – adjustment of that central relationship.

I remember at the very start of Shefflin's career that Cody cautioned against getting carried away with the young newcomer's prospects, pointing out that he had a fitness advantage because of Fitzgibbon at that stage in early 1999. Yet by championship time the manager had entrusted the 20-year-old with the free-taking duties instead of the legendarily accomplished DJ Carey. In a final that proved a great disappointment for Kilkenny, Shefflin was the only forward to play to form and top scored with 0-5, including an impeccable four frees on a wet day in a low scoring match won by Cork. He ended the championship as joint-top scorer, a first step to what would be an all-time record of 27-483. A week later he won an All-Ireland under-21 with the county and the pattern was set for performances on the biggest stage.

As a player he was at 6' 2" strong in the air but not especially fast nor a virtuoso ball player. Hard work had certainly brought out a formidable talent but he had what all great players possess – the confidence and nerve to execute his skills under excruciating pressure and when the stakes are highest. Shefflin had an instinctive sense of what the team needed him to do. In the 2002 final he immediately took on Seán McMahon who had been having a commanding season for Clare at centre back and created the opening goal.

Brian Whelahan, the only contemporary Team of the Millennium laureate, remembers realising that his own great day was nearly done when he was close by Shefflin, marking him as a lineball was being taken, and being taken aback that his opponent called the ball on himself regardless of his marker's presence.

When the 2003 final was in the balance against Cork he delivered a galvanising point from under the Cusack Stand and over the Canal End goal posts. Even Cody, to whom individual plaudits don't come easily, pinpointed it as a key event in the win.

When Tipperary's unexpectedly strong challenge was at its zenith in 2009 it was Shefflin who strode up to take the critical penalty with minutes to go and dispatch it venomously to the net. In a way there was no greater indication of his importance than the 2010 final. The pre-match madness on the cusp of five-in-a-row that convinced someone of Brian Cody's determinedly unsentimental nature that Shefflin could play for a while on an injured cruciate demonstrated how uneasy he was at the idea of sending out the team without his on-field lieutenant.

When he had to leave after 13 minutes, he had played the ball more often than anyone else and the sight of his departure was beyond dispiriting for the team.



Bonus territory
The accolades kept stacking up and after his return from what had been a second career cruciate injury was blessed with success and an eighth All-Ireland drawing him level with Christy Ring and John Doyle. The record – an astonishing ninth Celtic Cross – came in what may have been his happiest year in 2012. Injury again stalked him and he announced at a media conference in May 2013 that because of an aggravated foot injury he would not be able to continue his record of consecutive appearances.

At the time he appeared content, genuinely philosophical about the future and his career in bonus territory. Despite the scale of his profile, Shefflin has always been relaxed with media. He picked and chose the engagement but in less formal post-match or press night surroundings was courteous and good humoured.

On that day nearly two years ago he reflected on 2012 with its record 10th All-Ireland medal, 11th All Star and third Hurler of the Year award. "I said it at the time that it was a special year, the way the whole summer transpired because obviously I had the injury and was struggling a bit and struggling for form a bit and then it just blossomed for me from there. That was a special one for myself, to win the Hurler of the Year 10 years after my first and the whole year.

"The way Kilkenny were just gone after the Leinster final and next thing, it just started to come, started to come and then finished with a buzz. That's sport. That's why we play – to get that buzz."

Watching even the greatest of careers unfold is an incremental process. The power of greatness is that it endures. For the rest of our lives we can say that we saw Henry Shefflin play."

[seafoid]

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/hurling/henry-shefflin-mesmerising-from-beginning-to-end-1.2151591

"Sixteen years at the heart of the fastest game and it has gone by in a flash. Noon tomorrow – March 25th – will find him sitting in Langton's hotel, the unchanging establishment where legions of Kilkenny hurling gods have crossed the threshold down the decades. He will explain to the public why he won't be seen wearing the black and amber again and of how he just knew it was "time".
And there will be something forlorn about the breeze in the Marble City, even if there is nothing to mourn. Henry Shefflin's hurling life with Kilkenny has been a sustained performance of endeavour mingled with genius. It has been one long ovation.
If he got a lucky break, then it was that he happened to be born in the same playing era as exceptional talents like JJ Delaney, James "Cha" Fitzpatrick, Tommy Walsh, Richie Power. Since word travelled from Noreside on a humdrum Tuesday afternoon, his almost embarrassing treasure trove of 10 All-Irelands, 11 All Stars, five national leagues, three All-Ireland clubs with Ballyhale and three times the supreme Hurler of the Year accolade – have been trotted out on the radio, on the websites and on the main evening news.
•    Ireland is a village, no question, but the news about Shefflin would have reached every GAA person around the world within hours and it would have felt like a significant shift, like the end of special and distinctive era in Irish sporting and cultural life. Many summers have passed since it was accepted that the tall, pale, copper-haired stickman from Kilkenny belonged to the fraternity of GAA's immortal figures. And that his persona might just overshadow all of them.
How do you declare the greatest? How to compare, say, the hurling craft and influence of a blue-eyed Corkonian named Ring born in Cloyne during the War of Independence with a publican's son born in 1979, the year of Pope John Paul and of Charles Haughey's ascent to power and of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures; the year, in fact, when Ring's sudden death caused a cold wind to whip through Cork county and the country in general.

The most relevant comparison is that they both caught the imagination of the Irish sporting public in a way that was unprecedented. The most relevant comparison is that in front of packed houses in Thurles or in Croke Park, they had the power to grab the souls of all present, for an instant or for the hour. They weren't fazed by all eyes on them, all the time.

All-conquering Shamrocks
Maybe Shefflin had a stroke of luck too in that he was raised in Ballyhale, the place which has acquired a near-mythical status in Kilkenny's golden vale of hurling villages. He has accounted for his grounding in the game often enough: the received jolt of magic of the all-conquering Shamrocks sides of the 1980s, the simple and profound instruction given by Joe Dunphy, the local schoolmaster and then growing up in a house of uncommonly gifted hurlers.

The brothers won medals in stripes before him, remember: John in a man-of-the-match display in the minor All-Ireland in 1990 and Tommy an under-21 medal in the same year. Decades before Henry was referred to as the "King" – and it's a title that always conflicted with his views on the importance of the collective – he was regarded as an ordinary enough young prospect: a big lad mad for the game in a county teeming with such teenagers. "A fella with a big ould arse to throw in at full forward" was his lightly disparaging verdict on his days with St Kieran's college.
The stick-craft was developed and refined in the squash court behind the family pub but it wasn't until he was out of his teens that he went supernova in a way that mystified even his closest friends and that will only be satisfactorily explained in his biography this autumn. Between 1998 and 2000 he was transformed over a couple of seasons from a fringe candidate of the county under-21 team to the on-field conscience of the new model army which Brian Cody began to assemble.
Shefflin's Kilkenny years – 1999 to 2014 – coincided with a hugely transformative period for the GAA, when it became a more expansive and slicker organisation whose games commanded huge media interest – and revenue. Shefflin was an able communicator, genial and full of common sense and always careful about his public utterances. He came across as such a rock of common sense that he inadvertently demystified some of his most extraordinary performances.

Made Kilkenny seem invincible
It wasn't so much the decorative skill of John Troy or DJ Carey that set him apart, as much as the omnipotent range of his fundamental excellence. His marksmanship, his ball-winning, his passing, his tenacity, his temperament and, perhaps best of all, his instinct for delivering the plays that simultaneously steeled his Kilkenny teammates and withered the belief of opposing counties. He worked like a demon and hit hard. He made Kilkenny seem invincible.

Everyone knows that Shefflin won 10All-Irelands with Kilkenny but now that he has left, the question will be asked. How many All-Irelands did Kilkenny win with Henry Shefflin? Those nerveless, coldly beautiful closing minutes of September 2009; the fearless assault on Galway sensibilities in the final two years later; those were just two days when it seemed as if his force of will was as important as his pure hurling talent.
It shouldn't be forgotten how hard he fought for his obsession. A cruciate ligament injury in the All-Ireland final of 2007. A cruciate in the All-Ireland semi-final against Cork three years later – and his exit in that year's final when his departure from the field presaged the end of Kilkenny's stunning drive for a fifth consecutive All-Ireland title.
He ignored the toll on his body and worked harder and harder and kept on coming back, season after season, seemingly as impervious to age as Cody. But he is 36 now.
He has given so much. So while it is such a shock to think of him calling time and wishing the ship and crew good sailing without him, it is no surprise. All-Ireland hurling has entered its post-Shefflin existence and in the immediate few days, there is something saddening about that. But what a splendid contribution; what a pleasure and a thrill to see him play.
Even the hurlers and counties whom he crushed in those 10 crowning summers will tip their caps this week.
Mesmerising, from beginning to end."

Keith Duggan is such a class writer. I love the Joy Division reference in the middle of a super hurling article.