'I never thought I’d be getting back to Croke Park,' Ciarán Sheehan on taking the long way to HQ

An unexpected final chapter. A wonderfully fitting final chapter.

From Ovens to Páirc Uí Chaoimh, to Croke Park, to Carlton and Melbourne on the other side of the world, to Shanagarry on the other side of Cork, and now back to Croke Park once more.

There is no hint or suggestion that Sunday’s All-Ireland junior club hurling final will bring the curtain down on Ciarán Sheehan’s colourful and varied playing career. But he knows he is in the final pages. Eight operations alone on his left knee will tell you the extent to which the body is sellotaped together and just about standing upright.

The 34-year-old knows the damage being done every time he steps inside the white lines, he knows it is not sustainable, and he is also extremely conscious of being able to kick about in the back garden in the years ahead with his two kids, Edan and Leni.

So, yes, Ciarán Sheehan is nearing the end and is absolutely delighted that a visit to Croke Park has come into view before that retiring finish line is reached.

It is 10-and-a-half years since he last lined out at GAA HQ. That was an All-Ireland football quarter-final defeat to Dublin. Three months later, in November of 2013, he put pen to paper with AFL side Carlton and began a fresh chapter many miles from home.

It is 17 years since he last lined out at GAA HQ with a hurley in hand. That was the 2008 All-Ireland minor semi-final, Sheehan centre-forward on a Cork team that fell to Galway by four points.

It is four years to the month since he spectated at Croke Park on the afternoon of Russell Rovers’ All-Ireland junior club final defeat to Conahy Shamrocks. His wife, Amy, is part of the Hartnett family ingrained in Russell Rovers.

There was no way of even imagining that he’d be their captain when next they’d grace that stage, especially as he was already back pulling on the red and yellow of Éire Óg in the five months since him and Amy had turned the key in the door in Melbourne and landed home to set up shop in Shanagarry.

“I never thought I’d be getting back to Croke Park,” Sheehan begins.

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“It’s a fairly special kind of achievement in my mind to be able to actually represent the club, represent my family now, we are a Shanagarry family, we are a Russell Rovers family, but I would never have envisaged getting back to Croke Park.

“I always loved playing there. To be able to get back there and play again, it's very special and would never have been envisaged it, to be honest.

“I was approached to get involved in Russell Rovers on a coaching level back in 2022. I helped out a bit there for a year, got to know the group a bit more, and at that stage then I was given the opportunity to join Russell Rovers and play hurling with them. It worked for me personally, it worked for the family, and Éire Óg at the time were nothing but supportive, so that is how I wound up pulling on the Russell Rovers jersey in 2023.” Although better known for his footballing exploits, both here and abroad, hurling was a greater fixture in his childhood and upbringing. He was reared on the story of his granduncle, Colm Sheehan, scoring two goals during Cork’s 1966 All-Ireland hurling final win.

That he wound up as a Cork footballer and an All-Ireland winning starter in 2010, rather than a Cork senior hurler, was decided by the simple order of phone calls he received.

“I got a couple of calls from a couple of senior [hurling] managers over the years, Denis Walsh and Gerald McCarty, to come in, but at the time I actually had got a phone call from Conor Counihan first. And it was literally that, he called me first.

“We won an All-Ireland U21 football title in 2009 as well, so it was kind of a timing thing. We had a good strong team there, the Cork footballers had progressed really well and were competing at that period of time.

“And I also had a player I really looked up to in Danny Goulding who was a club mate and wanted to follow in his footsteps a little bit.”

The hurling door swung back open at the end of the 2013 season. The county’s most talented dual players were to be facilitated in both codes. Timing again intervened, Sheehan heading off out the door to Australia.

“I would have always loved to have tried that for a year,” he admits.

“I remember sitting down with Brian [Cuthbert] and saying that I was going to go [to Australia]. I had heard before that potentially the door was going to be open to [dual players] and look, who knows, I may not have been good enough for the hurling at that point, but I knew there was maybe a slight chance that potentially I could be given a chance.

“But certainly, with the way things fell, it was my third knock on the door from Carlton to come out to Australia and I took that as a sign to really go for it. I had finished college, I was in a good spot and yeah, didn’t look back, just made the decision. Didn’t look back then.”

He’s not looking back now either. And why would he be when this final chapter has been so unexpectedly kind to him.

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