Limerick dealt major injury blow as four-time All-Star Sean Finn ruled out for season with ACL injury

The four-time All Star, 27, damaged his left knee during last Saturday’s narrow defeat to local rivals Clare in a gripping Munster round-robin clash at the TUS Gaelic Grounds.

His manager, John Kiely, had said on Tuesday that initial indications were “not too bad” but they wouldn’t know for certain until receiving results of a scan.

That scan has now confirmed the worst-case scenario of a torn cruciate ligament for the second time in Finn’s career.

“The Limerick senior hurling management wish to confirm this evening that Seán Finn suffered an ACL injury on Saturday evening last that will rule him out for the remainder of the season,” a brief statement this evening confirmed.

“We wish Seán the very best in his recovery, and assure him of our fullest support and expertise on that journey.”

The injury is a crushing blow not just to the player himself but to Limerick’s pursuit of a history-equalling All-Ireland four-in-a-row. Last weekend’s surprise loss had already upped the ante for a team that was widely tipped to emerge from their province relatively unscathed before last weekend’s double-whammy.

Finn’s left knee buckled as he chased Clare forward Peter Duggan in the last play of the first half. As Duggan turned and shot for goal, forcing a brilliant save from Nickie Quaid at the expense of a point, his Limerick marker was left in a crumpled heap. The Bruff clubman had to be helped off the pitch at half-time and didn’t resurface.

It is the second time that Finn has succumbed to the dreaded ACL injury; his first one occurred while on Fitzgibbon Cup duty for UL against Mary Immaculate in 2016.

He had been called into the Limerick senior panel that winter before disaster struck, and he missed the entire season.

“It was 13 months before I got back,” he recalled in a 2019 interview. “Ray Moran did [the operation] for me up in the Santry Sports Clinic and I was really off for eight months with it, but then I got my Co-Op placement from college in Wexford so I couldn’t actually come back training from January to March which added another three months.

“But in a way that was the best thing that happened with me because that extra three months’ rehab and recovery has really stood to me.

“It was very frustrating at times. That summer was very tough. There was championship games on, and you felt in your head that you were good enough to play and you wanted to play and you’d see the bus taking off with all your friends on it.”

In the same interview, Finn encapsulated the self-doubt that follows every ACL victim on the road to recovery. “The rehab is so tedious and meticulous. There were some bad moments alright. You start overthinking everything with your knee,” he admitted.

“If you hear a crack, or go over on it, or wake up one morning and it’s swollen, and you don’t know why, you start panicking. You just have to trust whatever [programme] your physio has given you.

“But I got it done well and looked after it properly - and the one good thing from it was that I realised just how much I wanted to play, that the appetite and the hunger is still there.”

A driven Finn bounced back in spectacular fashion. He won his second All-Ireland U-21 medal in 2017 while emerging as a man-marking colossus at senior level under Kiely.

During Limerick’s spectacular run of four All-Ireland triumphs in the last five seasons, his consistency was rewarded with four consecutive All-Stars, all at right corner-back, between 2018 and ’21.

He missed out on a fifth straight award in 2022, although he did make The Sunday Game team of the year for a fifth season running.