Kilkenny star to miss out on upcoming hurling championship

The clocks have gone forward and the build-up is well and truly on to the summer’s championship action with Kilkenny opening up their Leinster campaign at home to Galway on Saturday, April 19 in UPMC Nowlan Park (Easter Saturday).

However, there is bad news on the injury front for Derek Lyng’s side after the Emeralds man confirmed that Tom Phelan will sit out the rest of the season with a knee injury.

The Conahy Shamrocks player has had a torrid time during 2025 with his last appearance in the black and amber being a substitute appearance during last year’s All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Clare.

LISTEN: Kilkenny managers Mark Dowling (U20) and Niall Bergin (Minor)

Despite having no gametime at all this year, it was hoped that Phelan would play some part in the championship, but that has been dashed after he required knee surgery.

“Unfortunately Tom has had to have surgery so his season is over, which is a shame because he put a huge amount of work in trying to rehab the knee,” Lyng said when speaking at the launch of the 31st season of Tirlán’s sponsorship of the county. “But, unfortunately he wasn’t successful so we don’t have Tom. It’s really disappointing, not only for us, but obviously for the player himself, considering all the work he’s put in.

“Hopefully he’ll come back stronger from that at some point. The advice was to try to rehab it first but unfortunately that hasn’t worked. This is the only route possible now for him to return to action.”

Elsewhere the Kilkenny boss is hopeful of having Adrian Mullen available after the Shamrocks man sat out the recent Allianz League campaign.

“Adrian has had a tough time, a long time with the rehab, which we knew was on the cards, but he’s been working very hard behind the scenes in the last couple of months,” the manager said.

“I’m hoping in the next seven to 10 days he’ll be back training fully. He’s doing a little bit at the minute but still a little bit off full training. But he’s working very hard away from the scenes.

“It’s good that we have players coming back hopefully in the next seven to 10 days.”

Lyng and the Kilkenny squad have just returned from warm weather training in Portugal which was the first time the county stepped outside Irish shores to get some work into their legs with such a busy championship schedule on the horizon.

The trip came hot off the heels of the Cats’ Allianz League campaign which saw them claim a big victory over Limerick in the final game. Lyng is hoping they can repeat that type of form over the next few weeks.

“I think it was a positive performance and we needed that,” he said. “We’d been working hard throughout the league and we’ve seen an awful lot of players.

“It’s always good to get a positive performance in before you finish up. It was good, but that was one performance.

“There’s a good gap to our next game but we need to keep backing those up. That’s the challenge for us now and it’s a good one.

“In some respects. I’d like to be in the league final too, but we’re not so that’s the way it is. We have to maximise the time we have now and make sure we utilise it as best as possible, so we’re doing that.

“Training is going very well. We’re training hard. In the next few weeks we have to keep ramping it up and getting ready for the first game against Galway.”

Hear more underage Kilkenny GAA coverage below: