by Paddy Hickey

Long-serving Wicklow ace Ciaran Hyland is set to call time on his inter-county career unless his personal circumstances change significantly before the end of the year.

Now aged 36, the tight-marking defender made his senior debut for the Garden County as long ago as 2003 in a Leinster Championship tie against Louth at Croke Park.

Hyland would love to represent Wicklow for yet another year, but a combination of domestic and work commitments may not make this desire a feasible proposition.

"I still have a tremendous appetite and enthusiasm to play on for the county, and I would have no worries about my level of physical fitness to do a decent job for Wicklow," remarked the Arklow Geraldines-Ballymoney clubman, who received an All Star nomination in 2009.

"But unless my circumstances change over the next few months it's unlikely that I will be able to continue playing inter-county football.

"At the moment, my partner and myself are very busy looking after our one-and-a-half year old baby daughter and we take turns at doing this.

"As well, last November my partner and myself opened up an online fashion business, for which she herself does all the modelling of the clothes and travels to Paris and London to make purchases.

"In connection with this, we have also opened up a shop in the Main Street of Arklow.

"In addition, we expect to move into a new house within the next months.

"And, as I work in Dublin, the commute from Arklow involves me being generally out of the house on my work days from six in the morning to nine in the evening.

"Furthermore, the commitment for inter-county football means that you have to go training four to five nights a week.

"All of those factors add up to make it very difficult for me to continue to make myself available to play for Wicklow," added Hyland.

In this year's Championship, the Arklow man featured in the Leinster clashes against Offaly and Dublin, but an injury sustained in the latter tie ruled him out of the subsequent All-Ireland qualifiers' defeat by Cavan.

"I tore an ankle ligament about five minutes from the end of the Dublin game, but with all the adrenalin I played on until the final whistle," he recalled on the O'Moore Park encounter.

"That probably aggravated the damage to my ankle and the next morning I could hardly walk and after that I was on crutches for about six weeks.

"So all I could do for the Cavan game was to be a spectator, and, of course, that was a big disappointment for me."

But in the aftermath of recovering from his injury, Hyland is now eagerly looking forward to featuring prominently for his club in the Wicklow Championship.

"I was able to resume training two weeks ago, and I came on for the last 20 minutes in our first round Championship against Newtown which we won by 2-14 to 0-10," he pointed out.

"Our next game is against Blessington on Sunday week at Aughrim, and hopefully I might be able to start in that.

"Blessington will be favourites, but this year a lot of promising young lads have broken into our team, so we will be quite hopeful of causing an upset."

Follow our live match tracker this weekend for minute-by-minute coverage of the All-Ireland senior hurling championship semi-finals.

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