I’d never turn my back on Decies SHANAHAN NOT GIVING UP
37 years, one month, 24 days – 1972 Australian Open
36 year, 5 months, 7 days – 2018 Australian Open
36 years, four months, five days – 1971 Australian Open
35 years, 10 months, 26 days - 2017 Wimbledon
a repeat next year – and further defy Father Time.
“Now, much like I did leading up to the 2017 season, I plan to take the necessary time to be 100% ready to play at my highest level,” he wrote on Twitter.
“I will be missing my fans and the tour dearly but I will look forward to seeing everyone back on tour at the start of the 2021 season.”
Federer won his 20th Grand Slam title in Melbourne in 2018 but since then his rivals in the race to be the greatest male player ever have narrowed the gap at the top.
Rafa Nadal is on 19 and Novak Djokovic 17. With Wimbledon cancelled, this injury lay-off will deny Federer the chance to add to his tally this year but the latest surgery could extend his remarkable career even further.
He has not played since losing the Australian Open semi to Djokovic in January.
MAURICE SHANAHAN is refusing to call time on his county hurling career and is determined to prove new manager Liam Cahill wrong.
Experienced Waterford duo Shananan, 30, and Noel Connors were not part of the 50-strong training squad that Cahill assembled earlier this year after he took charge of the Decies.
However, after 11 years representing the Munster outfit, Shanahan feels he still has something to offer.
And in conversion with The Backdoor Hurling Show, Shanahan says he felt a little hard done by after not getting the chance to impress the man (below) when he took over.
“It was (tough to take) to be honest. We started in ’09 so we are over 10 years there. To get a phonecall like that isn’t a nice call to get,” said Shanahan, who won a Munster title alongside his brother Dan in 2010.
“I can’t talk for Noel but the one thing I would have a problem about is there was over 50 lads given a chance. Myself and Noel were the only two not given a chance.
“But look, if that’s what Liam thinks, best of luck to him. Hopefully we can go out with our clubs and hopefully prove him wrong. But it doesn’t always happen like that either.”
The announcement by the GAA in recent days that the inter-county season will restart in October means there is a chance that Cahill’s Waterford will have the chance to fintipperary ish out their impressive National League campaign.
With three wins from their five games, Waterford had finished second in Group A and had qualified to play Kilkenny in the quarter-final.
And while he is refusing to say his time in the county shirt is over now, Shanahan knows he faces an uphill task to impress with his club Lismore as soon as their games return at the end of July. “I’ll never say my county days are over but I suppose under Liam they probably are over,” he added.
“If I wasn’t one of the best 50 to get a trial, how can he really call you back, you know?
“But I’ll never turn my back on Waterford to be honest.
“Hopefully I can go back and perform with my club and help them get back up there because we have a great club in Lismore.
“We are not that far away either. We have good young fellas coming through. We have two on the Waterford panel, Jack Pender and Iarlaith Daly. I am the oldest on the club team bar Dan. We’ll go back training with our club and see where we can go.”