Approaching half-time in Thurles last Saturday night, Conor Prunty vied for possession with Tipperary’s Mark Kehoe and got an all too familiar sensation.
The same hamstring that he pulled 12 months ago had flared up again.
Unfortunately for the Waterford full-back, he’s no stranger to soft tissue injuries having had numerous quad tears, a calf tear and now multiple hamstring problems.
It’s particularly frustrating in that he thought he had done the spadework in order to eliminate such issues.
“I did a lot of work with the physio before we went back,” he explains. “I had a bad quad injury with the club in the football championship this year and that put me out for 12 weeks so that was in September/October.
“I got stuck back into the physio with Waterford then for the first couple of months of the year and we just focused on discrepancies and balancing up the body and then all my old injuries, just trying to attack them a bit and get on top of them.
“We have got on top of them I suppose - I haven’t felt any niggles or anything in the quads.”
Prunty’s League campaign is certainly over and whether he can make it back in time for Waterford’s Championship opener against Limerick on April 23 remains to be seen.
“I’m so used to it now you box-tick it and you get back into rehab mode and you’re just trying to get back on top of things again. There’s no real time to get down about it. You’re in a fast-paced environment.”
Last year he managed to get over his hamstring issue just in time to captain Waterford in the League final as they scored a hugely impressive victory over Cork.
Having previously skippered the team in losing Munster and All-Ireland final appearances against Limerick in 2020 in front of no crowds, he says it was a “surreal experience”.
“Looking out on the pitch in Thurles and seeing so many Waterford fans, the joy on people’s faces and stuff like that and meeting friends and family and stuff like that when you’re walking across the field, I suppose that’s what you’re chasing. You’re chasing feelings like that.”
Winning that League title was subsequently suggested as a factor in Waterford’s poor Championship showing but Prunty doesn’t subscribe to that and believes that beating Kilkenny tomorrow in his absence to reach the last four would fuel their season.
“Teams thrive on momentum and I think it’s not a bad thing if you’re in a League semi-final.
“Others might say look at us last year but I’ll stand by the point that I don’t think it’s a bad thing.”
The captaincy has since been passed jointly to Jamie Barron and Stephen Bennett, with Prunty having been thrust into the role from vice-captain after Pauric Mahony suffered a cruciate injury in October 2020, just ahead of the Covid-interrupted season resuming.
Being entrusted with the role by then manager Liam Cahill at just 23 was somewhat daunting but it certainly didn’t impact negatively as he had a fine campaign, won an All Star the following season and lifted the League title the year after.
“Initially I said, ‘Are they sure about me?’ but I just grew into the role.
“I knew that I got on with most of the lads and there was respect there among the group so it would have been a bit daunting if you had a lot of older fellas that might have had 10 years on me at the time and I landed in there.
“But I think most fellas are around my age and we all kind of got on very well so it wasn’t that big an issue and I thought at the time that I didn’t overthink and I just played my own game and if I had to talk, I’d speak but it wasn’t anything that was overwhelming.”
Now a bulwark of the team, Prunty was just 11 when new Waterford manager Davy Fitzgerald took on his first senior inter-county managerial role with the county back in 2008.
“I remember being at a few of his training sessions in Fraher Field. I would have snuck in and sat in and watched one or two of them so they were kind of crazy times.
“There were no helmets, you’re looking at all your icons growing up running around and back then when you’re that young you’d think this stuff is crazy but when you’re doing it yourself and training that way now, you’re thinking it’s normal stuff.
“It’s funny how things change.”
