Austin Gleeson admits his game was affected by the fame that came from winning both the Hurler and Young Hurler of the Year award in 2016.

The Mount Sion clubman has struggled to reach the same heights since and speaking to gaa.ie at today's announcement of UPMC as official healthcare partner of the GAA/GPA, he admitted: “It was tough, I’m not going to lie but a lot of it was my own fault, especially that winter.

“I would have went to any event. I was young, I was 21, I just wanted to see what it was like.

“I never reached the fitness, I never reached that pedestal that I had set myself.

“Management and training and all that, they could have done what they wanted, it was my own self-belief thinking ‘Ah ya, I’ll be grand come April, I’ll get back there anyway’ but I just never did because I didn’t put in the work that I did in winter 2015.

“It’s something that three years on eventually, I’m after learning that I have to knuckle down, even since America (where he spend the summer playing for the Tipperary club) I’m after knuckling down. I went back to the club and I started training hard, even when we were knocked out of the club,

"I kept tipping away in the gym and now we’re back on the field and ready to go.”

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