Clare star Tony Kelly says he is eyeing a return in the coming weeks as he ramps up his recovery from ankle surgery.
The 2013 Hurler of the Year was forced to go under the knife towards the end of last year after managing the problem for a year or so, meaning he had to sit out Ballyea’s county title win.
But he is looking to step up his training this week and while Clare’s next League tie against Offaly on Sunday week may come too soon, the closing games against Limerick and Galway next month may be more achievable.
He said: “I've about 17 weeks done at the minute so just back in, I've a good block of running done, so I'll be back in hurling this week. It's all going to plan so far.
“I just have to ramp up the hurling, shake off the rustiness, and hopefully I'll be back on the field pretty soon.
“I think we're off this weekend so I'll play it week by week and see how I get on this week and next week and then we'll see how it's progressing. But it's going well at the minute.”
Kelly explained how he required “reconstruction on the outside and inside of the ankle, just replacing ligaments that were gone on the outside and the inside” with the issue having first flared up during the 2020 Championship.
“I rehabbed it then that winter and it wasn't too bad. And then mainly after last year's inter-county Championship it came back at me playing with the club and I kind of got to the stage where I couldn't train.
“Yeah, couldn't really train, playing bits of matches here and there, and then I just didn't want to do much more damage in terms of the injury so decided to get the surgery done and clean it up.”
Despite the seriousness of the surgery, Kelly said that it won’t compromise his ability to reclaim the scintillating form that has seen him win All Stars in each of the last two seasons despite Clare not progressing past the All-Ireland quarter-final stage.
“I'm hoping that I might actually have a bit more flexibility with it. So, yeah, they've told me that once the rehab goes to plan you should be back to full strength and back to normal so from that standpoint it's going well.”
Tony Kelly was speaking at the launch of East Coast Bakehouse's new Irish Protein brand 'In the Zone', created in partnership with the GAA and GPA as The Official Players' Choice.
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