Sad Retirement News

cruiserweight

From rte news

http://www.rte.ie/sport/2005/1117/phelanc.html

Conor Phelan's inter-county hurling career is over after a heart condition was diagnosed

Kilkenny forward Conor Phelan has been forced to hang up his hurl after doctors discovered a leaky valve in his heart.

A current panellist with the Cats, Phelan has been advised by cardiologists to end his hurling career at just 22-years of age.

The news comes just five months after Kilkenny manager Brian Cody lost young full-back Noel Hickey for the season due to a similar heart problem.

Hickey, 25, was diagnosed in June with a serious viral infection that could have damaged his heart, but doctors have allowed the Dunnamaggin defender to return to training this week.

Phelan said: "Noel had a problem with his heart earlier in the year and the county board decided it would be wise for the whole panel to have a medical check-up and I thought nothing of it at the time.

"I was called into a room and told that there was a problem with one of the valves in my heart and it seemed like a bad dream at first. I went up to the Mater Private in Dublin and some of the top cardiologists in the country examined me and gave me the bad news.

"Apparently intense physical exercise would put too much strain on my heart and make the leak in the valve worse. The hardest thing to take is that I can't feel one symptom of it at all, and feel perfectly fine," he told the Irish Independent.

Phelan, a member of the Clara club, came on as a substitute for Kilkenny in their 2003 All-Ireland SHC final win over Cork, and also won successive All-Ireland Under-21 medals in 2003 and 2004.

Sad news for the player concerned! Again raises issues to do with sports players and heart problems, the article mentions Noel Hickey, and none of us will forget Cormac MacAnallen either! I wonder how widespread these problems are and how easily they can be detected?

Lemlin

cruiserweight wrote:

From rte news

http://www.rte.ie/sport/2005/1117/phelanc.html



Sad news for the player concerned! Again raises issues to do with sports players and heart problems, the article mentions Noel Hickey, and none of us will forget Cormac MacAnallen either! I wonder how widespread these problems are and how easily they can be detected?

Happening quite a lot in the last ten years or so actually. Quite a few cases in soccer too, I remember a Benfica player a while back, not to mention Marc Vivien Foe of Cameroon.

Had first hand experience of heart illnesses at secondary school when a lad the year ahead of me dropped dead at an U16 game. No one could explain it.

cruiserweight

Yeah what struck me as the most frightening thing was this:

"Apparently intense physical exercise would put too much strain on my heart and make the leak in the valve worse. The hardest thing to take is that I can't feel one symptom of it at all, and feel perfectly fine," he told the Irish Independent.

He could have carried on playing and done himself irreperable damage or even worse died had he not found out! But fair play to the Kilkenny county board for having tests carried out on all of the panel!