A text came through for Joe Canning on his 32nd birthday on Sunday.

'It's a pity you're not 21', it read.

Though meant in jest, the Galway hurling great wasn't that enamoured by it.

"I think he meant it in a nice way but I took it in a 'Jeez, I'm getting very old' kind of way," Canning confided. 

"It's frustrating. Being straight up about it, there are not many years left in me and that is being 100% honest. 

“It was frustrating, last year, to miss out on most of the year. 

“Who knows, there mightn’t be anything this year. It is what it is for everybody, but you just get on with it. 

“It is a little frustrating, but that’s just life. Nothing is ever straight forward, you know."

#HurlingToTheCore ambassadors Joe Canning and Brendan Maher, pictured in their homes to launch Bord Gáis Energys sponsorship of the 2020 GAA All- Ireland Senior Hurling Championship. As part a new exciting upcoming series, Bord Gáis Energy are calling on hurling fans to upload their home match day videos throughout the Championship using #HurlingToTheCore, to be in with a chance of winning unmissable rewards.

A one-time All-Ireland winner so far, Canning admits with a grin that he is feeling "every bit" of his 32 years.

But then, things did get a lot tougher for him either side of that breakthrough All-Ireland success in 2017.

The year before, he tore a hamstring off the bone. Then he tore the groin adductor off the bone in March 2019.

"It has been difficult the last couple of years," he acknowledged. "I've had a couple of really serious injuries, they were on the same leg so I'm doing well enough to be actually playing at this moment."

Yet Canning remains the ultimate competitor. As the finishing line gets closer, the Portumna star insists his mindset has not wavered. 

"I play sport to compete and it has never changed that I'm a competitor and want to win as much as possible, that is just a simple fact," he stated.

"No matter who you are, if you play sport you want to win. So no matter when I was first playing at 19 or now at 32, I haven’t changed my mindset. 

"Winning is what you want to do as a sportsperson. That is when you feel good about yourself, that’s when you feel that you have accomplished something. That competitor that is in me is still there."

Other athletes have spoken about how the Covid lockdown allowed them to get off the non-stop carousel for a few weeks, heal up and get their body right.

For Canning, it wasn't so much that because he had been out for so long anyway and wasn't rushing back.

"I don’t think it is of much benefit, it does not feel like it anyway at the moment," he confessed. 

"I'm still sore after training the same as I was the last number of years, stuff like that. It is getting harder to recover I suppose. 

"I have a good few miles on the clock from an early age as well. Down through the years with the injuries, and no matter what people say when you get surgery and stuff, you are not the same when you come back. 

"You think you're the same and people try and fix you. But no matter what you do, and it's the same if you break a hurl and you fix it, it's still not the same as it was before. 

"Or if you break a cup and glue it back together or something like that, nothing is ever the same when you try and fix it back together. 

"Yeah, the break I don’t feel it, (like) I am two years younger or four years younger like that. 

"I feel my age when I wake up in the morning after matches or after training. But that's just part of life."

Galway's Joe Canning

The inter-county championship is to start at the end of the month. Canning's Galway will face Wexford in a restructured format.

He says that league form before the shutdown is meaningless now.

"It's almost like a new year, to be straight up about it, so I don't think it will have any effect on the championship," Canning commented. 

"Like if a team was going well during the league at that time, I don't think you could carry it with you for the last number of months because everybody has gone back to clubs and stuff like that."

As for players being apprehensive in that case, Canning believes it that feeling comes more from the bigger picture that people are dealing with now.

"There's probably apprehension about whether we'll get any championship at all or a match at all in these times, more so than anything," he said.

"I don't think lads are worried about anything really too much other than we'll get some sport. "Front and foremost, people are more worried about their families and their friends and how healthy they are.

"Sport is just a sidecar, the bit of normality we would have had during the summer months and even this time of the year. 

"There might be a bit of sport in TV and that kind of thing. I don’t think people are too worried about where they are sports-wise, it is just, will we get sports in the first place? 

“We mightn’t even get to the start of it. That’s the thing about it - you don’t know what’s going to happen today or tomorrow. 

"And that’s part and parcel of the way we’re living life at the moment.

“We’re living in a world of unknown. You take every day as it comes and if you’re lucky enough to play a bit of sport in the next couple of months, great.

“If not, that’s the way it goes. It could be all gone tomorrow. It could be all gone in two or three weeks."

Under the new format, the losers of the Galway-Wexford game will have to take the back door route to pursue All-Ireland glory.

At least in hurling there is a second chance, which is not the case in Gaelic Football, where it's a straight knock-out format this year due to the condensed schedule.

“Unfair? No. It is what it is," said Canning. "It’s like anything. We don’t really get much of a say in anything that happens. 

"So whatever decision they make, you just have to go with it.

“It’s like the yellow sliotars they announced the other day. You just have to go with it. Croke Park makes decisions on these things. That’s just the way it is.

"We weren’t consulted about it...maybe some players were. I played with them before in the 11s over in Boston a few years ago, but they were rock hard. 

"I think Eoin Murphy tweeted you’d want to have 500 hurls because they’ll break the hurls so much. But hopefully they’ll rectify that.

“I don’t see the point in changing. We played the last number of years with a white sliotar under lights in the League. So I don’t get the basis behind it.

“We’ve all played under lights in Leagues. Nobody came out and said they couldn’t see the sliotar. Maybe players were consulted, I don’t know.

“It’s a funny one for me, that it’s brought in just a few weeks before championship. Yeah, strange one."

In a similar vein, Canning claims he's not too bothered by the decision not to finish the Allianz Hurling League and to go ahead with the Limerick v Clare game at the end of the month as a Munster championship clash doubling up as the League final.

"It keeps recurring, I suppose, Croke Park make the decision and you just go with it," he remarked. 

"If that's how they feel it should be, at the end of the day that's fair enough.

"It would have obviously been nice in an ordinary world that the league would have been finished, but you kinda have to play the cards you're dealt at this stage and thank God that anything might be played at this stage.

"It's all about the championship now, that's all we have to focus on. The League, since it's been announced that Clare and Limerick were playing, for me that was it over with. That's the way it is".

As part of an exciting upcoming series called GAAGAA Box, Bord Gáis Energy are calling on hurling fans to upload their home match day videos throughout the Championship using #HurlingToTheCore to be in with a chance of winning unmissable rewards.