Shane O’Donnell hints at retirement plans as he admits future of Clare GAA stars ‘up in the air’ after All-Ireland exit
SHANE O’DONNELL says Clare’s sour season could tempt him to stay on.
The reigning Hurler of the Year thought 2025 would be his final farewell after winning his second All-Ireland last summer.
But he missed the bulk of the season with a shoulder injury as the Banner’s Liam MacCarthy defence blew up in smoke.
O’Donnell returned for the Munster SHC round 3 loss to Tipperary on May 10 which knocked them out of the Championship.
And the Éire Óg clubman admits he would find it hard to quit senior hurling after such a poor campaign.
He said: “Obviously, I’ve thought about it, but it’s probably not the time to make any decisions, really. I had talked about this year being my last year.
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“I can’t remember if one of yourselves reprimanded me on saying this every year, so I can’t remember who it was.
“So I’m a bit more careful about how I phrase this.
“I think we had genuinely intended, a number of us had intended, for this to be the last year.
“With how disappointing it ended, it makes it very difficult to hang up the boots. It’s still up there.
“I don’t know, to be honest.”
Lethal forward O’Donnell, along with team-mates Tony Kelly, 31, John Conlon, 36, and David McInerney, 32, are the sole survivors from Clare’s class of 2013 who went all the way to lifting the All-Ireland under Davy Fitzgerald 11 years ago.
And the Ennis native, 31, admits what some of his team-mates do next will have a massive impact on his decision.
He said: “It depends on a number of factors, not least, whether other players are staying or going. It definitely will be up in the air until the end of this year.
“I think in your mind you’re kind of thinking, ‘Yeah, do you know what, things like last year, we’re at that level now, so there’s no way we’re not going to go again’.
“But then we’ll see what happens essentially.
“When push came to shove after, I remember the week of our last game against Limerick, obviously we were out at this stage and it was the Tuesday training and kind of just wrapped up a session.
“I kind of turned to Davie Mac and just said, ‘That’s our last Tuesday session ever’.
“And he just looked at me and I was under the impression he was going to be leaving.
“He just turned to me and was like, ‘No,’ basically.
“And even in the couple of weeks before that, I had a very kind of compressed campaign of being very aware that these could be my last games with Clare and it started to become quite uncomfortable.
“But I will also say that I’m not of the same mindset as Tony, so I don’t intend to be scraped off the floor of a Clare dressing room to get me out of there.
“I will hopefully be able to walk out on my two feet.
“But I think there is that group that has played there for so long, it is hard.
“And it’s going to be a big decision from the first person to move out.
“And then if that person moves, then I think the rest of them will flow pretty quickly.”
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