Super Shane battles

SHANE O’ROURKE has played through the pain barrier for the last number of years and in Sunday’s SFC decider produced one of his best ever displays in the Simonstown shirt.

The 29-year-old was destined to follow in the footsteps of his famous father Colm from an early age, having won an All-Ireland senior colleges title with St Patrick’s CS Navan in 2004 and starring for Meath at underage level.

He made his senior debut with the Royals as a 19 year old in 2007 but sadly his intercounty career ended prematurely due to a series of serious injuries.

And after Sunday’s two in a row of Keegan Cup successes his father and Simonstown manager Colm revealed that this year could see the end of Shane’s career altogether.

‘Shane I thought had a brilliant game and his mother thought he had brilliant game which is even more important,’ O’Rourke senior quipped before explaining his son’s injury plight.

‘He is hampered badly, he doesn’t train much if anything and he is in a lot of pain with his hips and is on anti inflammatories before and after games in order to play. He’ll not play much more, it’s a big day for him we might not see him next year if he decides that’s enough.

‘He does phenomenal work on his own through gym work, the pool, it’s every day for him otherwise he wouldn’t be able to play at all. He’s had three operations, two on one hip, and one on the other, at this stage he’s probably near the other end of his run.

‘When he was 10 years younger he was a phenomenally mobile player, could cover the ground, now he has to play within certain limits. Even at that I thought he held sway at midfield, his kick passing was excellent, he set up a lot of stuff for us.

‘He uses his energy well though and the lads around him know what’s happening as well. We have a lot of mobile lads as well, Padraig McKeever, Conor Nash and Mark McCabe, they’re