On Sunday, Waterford played their first home league game in Walsh Park following its long-awaited makeover but without one very high profile absentee.
Not alone was Austin Gleeson not on the pitch against Clare last weekend, he wasn't even in the stadium. Indeed, he couldn't even switch on the TV for the first few minutes.
"To be honest, I had a ticket," Gleeson told RTÉ Sport on Tuesday.
"And I'd say about an hour before the game it really hit home (that I wasn't involved). And I ended up not going.
"I actually didn't even watch the first few minutes of the game. It had more of an effect than I thought it was going to have on me. I was only talking to my father after the game and he said it probably made a bit of sense that you were like that.
"Once I settled down and I was checking the scores on Twitter, I said I should be watching it. I ended up turning it on then."
The 2016 Hurler of the Year announced in late September last that he was taking a year out from hurling in 2024, citing a lack of "drive" and saying he needed a break from the inter-county game to re-energise.
It was a decision he'd been mulling over since the 2022 championship.
He was originally intent on taking a break last year, but after a chat with incoming manager Davy Fitzgerald and a number of team-mates, he decided to u-turn and reported for training in December 2022 for the 2023 campaign.
"Being completely honest, it was halfway through the (2022) Munster championship that I was thinking about it. It was after the championship that I made the full decision.
"I found myself very down constantly. I was actually going to do it last year (step away).
"We played Clare in the last game up in Clare in the last round of the round robin. I knew coming into the dressingroom after the game that I was probably going to step away. I was fully, fully going in on that.
"But I spoke to Davy and his management team, a good few of the players, and I decided to go back in.
"In hindsight, maybe, if I stuck to my guns and stayed out, I could be back in this year. I don't really know if it was a good decision to go back or a bad decision. But look, you can't change the past."
Waterford's 2022 championship season was a disaster, where the promise of the previous two years under Liam Cahill and that spring's league triumph mysteriously vanished in an instant.
By the time their elimination was sealed following the dismal loss to Clare in Ennis - the afternoon when Gleeson resolved that he needed a break - the atmosphere had turned somewhat toxic.
Soon, Cahill was out and Waterford had gone from the consensus No. 2 team in the country to being dismissed as a managerless rabble.
Gleeson, a wonder-kid who exploded into national prominence in the thrilling campaigns of 2016 and 2017, has frequently been a lightning rod for criticism on days where Waterford failed to fire.
He admits now that the criticism got to him more than he let on at the time.
"I just wasn't enjoying it. I felt like I was there to please other people instead of doing stuff for myself. And again, I probably done that a small bit last year.
"Probably getting a lot of criticism inside and out of the county was having a bigger effect on me than I was probably thinking.
"It does have an effect on you, there's no point in lying.
"When you’re in the league or the championship, you’re trying to stay away [from the public] and avoid people as much as you possibly can," he said.
"Waterford fans are great when they’re going well but when things are bad they’re probably the worst around, that’s being completely honest with you.
"It’s a hard place to be when things are not going right. You just try and avoid it - thankfully now I don’t have to avoid it.
"The honest truth is that there’s not one person [in the Waterford camp] not giving 100%. It’s not like they’re going out there to lose."
"Waterford fans are great when they're going well but when things are bad they’re probably the worst around, that’s being completely honest with you.
Coping with the rumour mill has been particularly frustrating for Gleeson, especially, he contends, when supporters insist on believing in their favoured version of events.
"Even last two or three weeks, there’s been rumours that I’m back in training with the lads - I’m not!"
Gleeson acknowledges that his own performances haven't always lived up to the promise of his early years in the senior set-up.
Having made his senior debut ten years against next month, it was in 2016 he emerged as a hurling sensation, famously winning the Hurler of the Year award and Young Hurler of the Year award in the same year, only the second to do so after Tony Kelly. [Interestingly, the only three winners of the HOTY award not to win the All-Ireland under its GAA/GPA guise are all from Waterford and all on a nine year loop - Browne '98, Shanahan '07, Gleeson '16]
He scored a remarkable individual goal in the semi-final win over Cork in 2017 but failed to influence the subsequent All-Ireland final and then injuries began to dog him in 2018. Since then, he's struggled to hit the heights of those early years.
Joe Canning once famously declared that scoring 2-12 on his championship debut against Cork was the worst thing he ever did as it set the bar of expectation too high. Does Gleeson relate?
"Definitely, I do. The first couple of years I was in there, I didn't know how far I’d go. I was just playing off confidence, I was enjoying it.
"Derek used to say, 'play with the shackles off’ - I was probably playing too much with the shackles off at times. Trying mad stuff.
"I suppose the couple of years after winning the award was tough. I’m not blaming anyone else, it was totally on me.
"I thought I'd get back into that shape or that fitness but I probably neglected myself a small bit more than I should have. It took me a few years to even come close. I don’t think I’ve ever probably reached the standard I reached that year.
"If there was one thing, I'd probably go and slap myself across the face at that age and try and do things a small bit differently. I probably would have trained harder," he said.
"I started picking up injuries and I found it very, very hard to get back. I definitely would go back and train harder, and make sure that my body was right. Injuries were something I very rarely had in the first two or three years."
In taking a year out, Gleeson, now 28, is hoping he'll come back re-energised for the final few years of his career as Waterford seek to get back challenging for honours.
"I explained that to Davy when I was having that phone call with him. I'm not planning on retiring. I'm not planning on anything like that. It's just literally, take the year out and get the drive back that I probably haven't had in a few years really. It's unfair on myself, the team-mates and the management if I'm not 100% in there. I know myself I wouldn't have been 100% in there.
"It's definitely only a year break, in my eyes. Whether the management want me back next year is the next thing!
"I got a few niggly injuries last year and things didn't go right for myself and the lads. That really made up my mind. To be honest, I picked up an injury going into the Tipperary game as well and I probably knew in my head that I was stepping away this year.
"But there was an atmosphere in the dressing room before and after the game, after getting the win, that almost turned my head a small bit but it was something I wanted to do and Davy probably knew that it was coming this year. He didn't pressure me.
"I know he gets a lot of bad press but he's always thinking about the player. He's never really being selfish about it."
While the narrative on Waterford has been aggressively downbeat for the guts of two years - a complete flip on where it was for the two Covid campaigns - Gleeson is adamant that the team are better than perceived.
And that they showed it in the rousing win over Tipperary in last year's round-robin, even if their elimination was already confirmed.
"We took a lot of criticism after the second and third game last year that we as players, didn't really think was deserved massively. There were a couple of conversations had between players before the Tipperary game and we said we were going to go out, play for ourselves and play for the manager.
"We didn't really care about what was on the outside. We completely changed the team against Tipperary and the lads gave it everything. There was a different atmosphere of an achievement to prove that we're not as bad as people think. We do have a good team there."
