Wexford hurling captain Matt O’Hanlon looks tanned and relaxed.
He has recently taken a break from work so until the championship is over he is very much focusing on hurling with his county.
However the 26-year-old is at pains to stress that his decision was made with his career and lifestyle in mind. It wasn't to accommodate the ever increasing demands of the inter county game.
"If I wasn’t hurling I would make the same decision and I would be travelling now," O'Hanlon told RTÉ Sport.
"It’s just convenient that I would have a couple of months before I went to travel and I could focus very much on hurling. That wasn’t the crux of the decision.
"I made a decision to leave my job, it got to the stage where in order to progress further within the company I would have needed to move to London or Geneva but due to my commitment to hurling I’m not geographically mobile.
I think kids growing up should aspire to put their careers first and I plan to do that once I’ve decided where my next move in my career will be
"So I decided to take the opportunity to really focus on the hurling for summer before I take some time out before I decide on my next career move.
"I think kids growing up should aspire to put their careers first and I plan to do that once I’ve decided where my next move in my career will be.
"I’m a career-focused man and always will be. It’s obvious that most inter-county players are students or teachers because they can afford to give more time to it. That’s just the reality.
"But there are pockets of people who are in full time jobs in senior positions in companies throughout the country. It is possible to juggle both but of course it’s easier if you have the summer off.
"That’s someone’s personal decision I don’t think you will see an influx of people going down the route. There are plenty of people who have proved it’s possible to do it when you have a full 9-5 job."
O’Hanlon doesn’t plan on being idle though, along with Lee Chin he plans to run summer camps in Wexford as hurling fever grips the county. He is enjoying the freedom that being a full-time athlete is giving him and of course all the extra time too.
"Before you would be using all your free time to jam in as much as possible outside of work. I'd work 9-6 then I'd have a defined period of time to get gym sessions in, to get meals cooked, to get to Wexford for training.
"Now I have more time to get all these things done, I can go to the gym in the middle of the day if I want. I can make a meal and eat them at the same time rather than preparing them days in advance.
"There are benefits, you can get an extra gym session in if you want or be out pucking a ball for a while. It's especially nice to be able to go to training at my ease not be battling with traffic."
Ever since O'Hanlon joined the Wexford panel he's been living in Dublin. First as a student in UCD then working in marketing, Monday through to Friday. He has spent a lot of time driving up and down the N11.
"The driving is second nature and I didn’t find it too difficult. But when you take a step back it’s a huge commitment.
"For seven or eight months of the year you are travelling up and down the road four times a week between training and going home for weekends.
"There would have always been a solid Wexford contingent in Dublin so we could car pool together so there wouldn’t be a situation where you are left on your own.
"In College there were a few of us there so we had three or four car loads. It all comes down to the fact that we do it when because we enjoy it."
O'Hanlon has most definitely seen the levels of commitment needed to be an inter county player increase over the years but he enjoys how professional it has become.
"The volume of training is similar, the levels of fitness and strength and condition and expertise has all increased.
"Players are fitter, faster, stronger players now. I don’t think I was travelling down to Wexford any more than I was a few years ago but there is an increase of time spent at training and what we do is more focused than it would have been."
O'Hanlon is also spending time helping his Dad with some renovations at home and also on the family farm.
He's making up for all the time spent away from home following his career both on and off the field.
He's had a taste of what the life of a full-time athlete could be like and it's impossible not to feel a bit envious.
"It's nice in the summer when the weather is good and it would have been a nice to go down that path, maybe if I had went for a different sport it would have been a possibility but the reality is that it's an amateur sport and it will be for a long time to come.
"I don't envisage a future where the GAA will go professional and I don't think it would be right as it would lose an awful lot of what it stands for currently. You see the conflicts in the GAA and the developments that it's making that it's a question that will keep rising.
"You question some of the merits made, what's the motivation, is it the player at the core of the decision or is it the fan or is it the person with the biggest cheque that's paying.
"But I don't make the decisions and only the people that do know the nuts and bolts of it. It's the powers that be that will decide the direction that the GAA is going in."
Wexford came through the round robin stage of the Leinster championship finishing third with two wins and O'Hanlon feels lessons will be learned from it's maiden year.
"As a fan people would agree that the home and away games were a success there was huge interest and I think the intensity of championship wasn't lost.
"I think the draw itself needs work. I don't think a team should get an unfair advantage. I think everyone should have two games on, then a break and then two games on. We played four weeks straight and then we had a four or five-week gap between our next match. It doesn't make sense.
"As a first stab at something new I though was interesting and great to be involved in, all in all we probably won't know the true merits of it for two or three years."
It's championship now though, so what would success look like for Wexford in 2018?
"We've gotten to an All-Ireland quarter-final before so I think it's time now that we got the next stage. The gauge changes after each round of the championship but we want to go where we haven't been before and that's to an All-Ireland semi-final or beyond.
"Galway are All-Ireland champions but I think within the chasing pack anyone can beat anyone on any given day. That's the beauty of the championship and it's most open of any that I've been involved in. There's an exciting few weeks ahead."
Follow Westmeath v Wexford and Carlow v Limerick via our live blog on RTÉ.ie and the News Now app. Follow Galway v Kilkenny via our live blog on RTÉ.ie and the News Now App, watch live on RTÉ1’s The Sunday Game (from 2.20pm) or listen to commentary on RTÉ Radio 1's Sunday Sport.
