One of hurling’s greatest.
Henry Shefflin’s Laochra Gael aired on TG4 earlier this year and the great programme once again did justice to one of the great GAA careers.
From his childhood in Ballyhale all the way to his tenth All-Ireland medal in 2014, we were given an insight into the life and times, the drive and the magic behind the game’s finest exponent.
Responding to adversity was perhaps his greatest trait, with Henry was always up for the fight. That hunger and relentless ambition was shared by many of his Kilkenny teammates and that was what set him and them apart.
Unlike DJ Carey and many of the other greats of the game, interestingly, Henry didn’t grow up as an underage prodigy. It is widely known that he didn’t rip it up during his time in St Kieran’s College, with Henry famously summing up his time there with the euphemism of him being the small fish in the big pond.
He loved his hurling but the confidence that we now associate with him wasn’t always there. Like all young lads, he was fond of the craic, too, and, as he admitted on the programme, he mightn’t have been giving himself the best chance to push on as a player.
“Because you grew up in a pub, and when you were that age, 17 or 18, your friends were going out to experiment and to have a few drinks and I was no different.
Through Brian Cody’s guidance, he was quick to grow out of that and by the time he was 20 he was making tracks as one of the most exciting young talents in the game.
All young lads will relate to his method of getting away with a bit of craic and a few drinks.
“But I used to have to have a drink in one of the other pubs and they knew I was a little bit underage but they didn’t mind serving me. I used to have to sober up very quickly when I walked back in these doors,” he said outside the family pub.
Henry Shefflin’s misspent youth. For more watch Henry Shefflin – Rí na gCat. 17/03/18 #TG4 @ 17:45 #LaochraGael #GAA pic.twitter.com/Lz1tvdGFAO
— Laochra Gael (@Laochra_Gael) March 16, 2018
Some typical ruthlessness from Brian Cody gave him the wake-up call he needed.
“Yeah, I enjoyed my food and I enjoyed my social life as well. People were saying to Brian, ‘Henry needs a break, he’s played a lot of games, and Brian was just like ‘no he doesn’t need a break. He just needs to get fit.'”
The mission to impress Cody drove him on.
“I think we were all afraid of Brian. We were all concerned with what he thought and what he felt.”
His commitment would never be questioned again.
“The whole diet, training, S and C was coming into it. I used to always walk into college, five miles a day to get myself ready for it,” he said of his early days in the black and amber.
Hurling became his life.
“So I used to go down, I’d have robbed the balls off the lads, that wasn’t easy. I’d hit ten, I’d county and you’d always try to get ten out of ten. It was all about visualising that.”
That dedication to his sport, that obsession with hurling, that’s why he’s now called the king.
