When Tony Leen reached out to me back in May, just before the intercounty GAA season started, I had no idea what he wanted me for. The Irish Examiner Sports Editor had DMed me asking if I could help him with an article he was writing. When the phone rang the next day, that was as much as I knew.

I answered the call and the question he put to me caught me on the hop. “Is there a kick in your clubmate James O’Donoghue?”

For a brief moment I considered taking evasive action. Going full Peter Keane. “Yerrah, I wouldn’t know much about that kind of thing, Tony. I’ll tell you, we had a neighbour there going back years ago and he used always say…” etc. When you’re a journalist, talking about your own club and your own clubmates is never easy. Say something positive and you’re being biased. Say something negative and you’re being disloyal. Some people can accept that it’s just your job and you’re giving an honest opinion. Others only see things in terms of “agendas” (perhaps because that’s how their own minds operate).

In the end, I didn’t really have time to formulate a masterplan with Tony waiting for my answer, so I told him the truth. James is an unbelievable player. He has shown that he can still do it in the recent past. If he stays injury-free, he will do it again. I said I couldn’t see him packing it in.

I know James reasonably well going back as far as our UL days and while the general public recognise him as someone with a cheeky, devil-may-care attitude towards the game and towards life, there is a fiercely determined side to him as well. Like all great players, he is ultra-competitive and extremely driven. Without ever asking him about it explicitly, I have no doubt whatsover that he desperately wants to get back to the highest level.

Considering how plagued he has been by injuries since that glorious 2014 campaign, he probably would have quit years ago if he didn’t have that appetite to come back in and contribute to the team.

That’s why the news that he was stepping away from the panel came as such a surprise to me. The narrative going around is that he has been forced to make this decision due to those aforementioned injury concerns, but, to the best of my knowledge, he has been injury-free of late. In fact, word on the street is that he did very well in a recent training match prior to the Munster semi-final.

He didn’t make the squad for that trip to Thurles, however, and apparently he also did not feature in a subsequent A versus B game, despite being available for selection. That would appear to have left O’Donoghue as the 13th choice forward on the panel. At best. Supporters might have assumed that his absence from the matchday squad was due to injury, but Peter Keane simply wasn’t picking him. Which, to be fair, is his prerogative as manager.

In my opinion, for whatever that’s worth, you would be very hard-pressed to find two forwards in Kerry who are more talented than James O’Donoghue, let alone 12. A fit O’Donoghue is such a great weapon to have in your arsenal – it’s certainly not one I’d be inclined to leave behind going into battle.

Whether or not this “step away” amounts to an actual retirement in the longer-term remains to be seen. The general feeling in the media and amongst supporters is that he’s done with Kerry for good but personally I think he would have just retired if he wanted to retire. O’Donoghue is 31, which isn’t exactly ancient, and County Board chairman Tim Murphy has spoken of the Killarney man's desire to play some club football "to see could he get some form back and see where that would take him”. He scored 1-2 in 30 minutes for Legion at the weekend. He can still do it if given the opportunity.

O’Donoghue will have plenty of fire in the belly for the upcoming County and Club Championships, that’s for sure. Then again, he always does.