When Clare played Wexford in last year’s Championship, the best Shane O’Donnell could manage was to listen to it on the car radio.
It’s a year ago this month since he suffered a serious concussion at training which trivialised the matter of whether he could get back on the field again or not.
O’Donnell just wanted a functioning brain that would allow him to carry out the basic day to day things that we largely take for granted. His inability to do even that much meant that he had written off his hurling career in his own mind and, at that stage, he wasn’t greatly troubled by the prospect of not togging out again.
“There was a point that I had fully accepted that I wasn't going to play again,” O’Donnell explained.
“It was not something I was too worried about at the time, I was worried about being able to function correctly, to process normal thoughts, things like that.
“Hurling was not on my radar at all, I had kind of accepted already that I was not going to hurl again and basically at the time couldn't ever justify putting myself in a position that I could end up in that condition again so that was kind of my mindset at the time.
“It was only when I fully came out of that, got the all clear from the specialist and he said the best way to handle being anxious about something is exposure.”
So he got back on the field for Éire Óg at the back end of last year but, right up to March, he still had his doubts about going back in with Clare.
“I went back to the specialist and he gave me the all clear and I kind of talked to Brian [Lohan] and they brought me in and I've been able to get back involved and all of that.”
His involvement has been pretty prominent, to be fair, with O’Donnell putting in a series of sparkling performances as Clare reached the Munster final, resulting in his being named the PwC Player of the Month for May.
When Clare play Wexford in this Saturday’s All-Ireland quarter-final, he’ll be as far removed from listening to it on the radio as you could imagine.
“I wouldn’t have been able to watch it on a screen and it would have been too, I’m not sure if emotive is the word, but it would have got my heart rate going too much to go to the actual game so my option was to listen in the car,” he recalls of the qualifier meeting, won by Clare, last July.
“That was kind of all I was left with really. It wasn’t really a conscious decision between different options, it was kind of what I was able for.”
His concussion episode hasn’t been the only threat to his elite hurling career in the last couple of years, though, with O’Donnell having toyed with moving to Boston in 2020.
He had already spent time at Harvard University having been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2018 and, having later completed his PhD in microbiology at UCC, the option was there to return for a postdoc.
In the end, he decided against it.
“I could have been there until the start of last year and then if I'd got work over there, which would have been likely, I would have stayed over there semi-permanently to permanently.
“It likely would have been the end of my hurling career if I'd made that decision, which I was aware of at the time. I was very conscious that if I'd stayed there, that would have been it for my career from a hurling perspective.
“My girlfriend was going to be based in Dublin for a few years, and still will be for a couple more years, so that was definitely a big part of it as well.
“I would say it's hard to put a percentage on it but it was probably 50-50 between those two things. If she was free to move, I would say I would have moved. That was probably where I was at.
“But with anything more on top of the hurling, it just made it more sensible for me to stay I think.”
Much to Clare’s benefit as O’Donnell has developed from the lethal marksman that hit 3-3 at just 19 in the 2013 All-Ireland final replay to mastering a deeper playmaking role.
“I’m playing more with abandon and just being less concerned about poor performances and shooting wides I would say. Definitely less concerned about that.
“Being out at wing-forward instead of corner-forward or full-forward gives you the opportunity to really put your mark on the game without necessarily having the ball in your hand.
“I'm really enjoying being able to chase lads, tackle lads, you know, really getting involved without having to be delivered the ball, basically, by a team-mate.
“So yeah, it's a bit of both but definitely that side of it, being able to physically get involved is something that I really enjoy out at wing-forward.”
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