On the inside of Shane O’Donnell’s right bicep is a tattoo that he had done many years ago when he finished his PhD in microbiology. A small gift to himself. To the untrained eye, it is a hexagonal shape surrounded by straight lines, but cryptic body art usually has a simple code; the tattoo represents the chemical formula for adrenaline.In a Clare jersey, it coursed through his body for the last time in Croke Park yesterday. At the final whistle, O’Donnell walked slowly towards the centre of the pitch and as he did, nine or 10 Limerick players approached him. There was warmth in every exchange. Cian Lynch wanted to say something, so did Diarmaid Byrnes and Shane O’Brien and Darragh O’Donovan. Game recognises game.O’Donnell first talked publicly about retirement in the autumn of 2023, but last Thursday he ended all doubt. For most players, being an intercounty player and eventually not being an intercounty player is one of the biggest lifestyle transitions they will ever experience. O’Donnell didn’t let it creep up on him.In the middle of his PhD he spent seven months at Harvard on a Fulbright Scholarship and during that time in Boston, he wondered if he would miss hurling or what the separation would be like. Donal Óg Cusack had been involved with the Clare team the previous season and O’Donnell remembered him saying that when he retired, his “daydreaming” about the game stopped. In other ways, too, he was left with a void that he couldn’t fill.“I genuinely had a fear that was going to happen to me,” said O’Donnell, a few years ago. “That when I retired from hurling, I was going to be always missing hurling and that the best part of my whole life would be over. Boston made me realise that was definitely not the case. There was so much that I enjoyed outside of hurling.”For many players, the end is taken out of their hands. They don’t know when to stop, or how. They’re afraid to let go. There is unfinished business. How much business is ever finished? Shane O'Donnell holds the Liam MacCarthy Cup at the Hill 16 end of Croke Park after Clare's All-Ireland SHC final victory against Cork in 2013, in which O'Donnell scored a hat-trick. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho O’Donnell has been an unusual player. In his career, he was shaped by experiences that were extraordinary. He dealt with the inverted narrative of the fairytale ending coming at the start. How many players must grapple with that? Name them? In the first 20 minutes of the 2013 All-Ireland SHC final replay, he scored a point and three goals with his first four possessions, in that order. He was a 19-year-old rookie, plunged into the starting team at two hours’ notice so he wouldn’t have time to dwell on the enormity of it. “God help him for the rest of his life. At 19, the pressure that’s going to be on him, every time he goes out from now on, to replicate this,” said Michael Duignan in the RTÉ commentary box as O’Donnell was substituted, four minutes from the end.For the next couple of years, fame ransacked his college life. He couldn’t blend into a crowd. The simple act of meeting friends for a night out was scuttled by strangers and the petty theft of his time. Well-meaning people tried to help, but there were no guardrails and there was no manual to guide his responses. In the GAA, every star moves between the arena and the mainstream of everyday life, but that is not always frictionless. In O’Donnell’s case, the boundaries collapsed. Clare's Shane O'Donnell with his mother, Mary O'Donnell, after Clare were narrowly beaten by Limerick in Sunday's All-Ireland SHC semi-final at Croke Park. Photograph: Tom O’Hanlon/Inpho As a player, he evolved, but in a sense the process was forced. He was never again the player he looked on that golden autumn afternoon in Croke Park 13 years ago. First impressions were misleading. In the championship, he never scored as many goals again as he did in his breakthrough season. In five seasons, he failed to score a goal. When Clare lost the Munster finals of 2017 and 18, he failed to score in either of them. He needed to find other ways to express his talent.“Basically, I didn’t want to shoot,” he said. “I never felt confident in my shooting. My first thought was to take on my man and if I can’t turn them, then I’d pass it to somebody who could shoot.”In the second half of his career, though, O’Donnell overcame those doubts. Brian Lohan moved him to the half-forward line and he turned into an all-rounder: ball-winner, playmaker, finisher, rainmaker, fire-starter. When Clare beat Cork in the 2024 All-Ireland final, Tony Kelly hit the shots that wounded Cork down the stretch, but when Clare trailed by seven points in the first half, it was O’Donnell who dragged them into the game. He had that warrior mentality. O’Donnell’s contribution to hurling, though, was not just on the field. Over the last five years he has taken every opportunity to raise awareness of concussion and its consequences. Every time he spoke about the subject, it felt like he was campaigning. He once agreed to an interview marking the 10th anniversary of his Croke Park hat-trick, only on the grounds that concussion would occupy a significant portion of the conversation. When he announced his retirement last Thursday, he spoke again about the scourge of head-high tackles in hurling. Clare's Shane O’Donnell looks on as David Reidy receives medical attention following a serious incident in last month's All-Ireland SHC quarter-final against Dublin at Semple Stadium, Co Tipperary. Photograph: Tom O'Hanlon/Inpho In 2021, he suffered a concussion that haunted him for months. For six weeks he couldn’t work and even when the symptoms subsided, the mental torment continued. In the second game of his comeback, a club match, he suffered a blow to the head that triggered a cascade of oppressive emotions. “I remember that night I couldn’t go to sleep. I used to have serious trouble sleeping. I tried to go to sleep and I whipped myself into a total frenzy of fear. Had loads of symptoms coming on. My head was spinning, all this kind of stuff. It was all in my head – it was completely created by my own fear around it. I got up and I was in tears and I was like, ‘I can’t do this again, I can’t do this again’.”“That bled on for months. I had no physical [issues by then]; it was just pure fear.”He overcame that too. O’Donnell’s only score yesterday was a distillation of him and his game. He hunted down Dan Morrissey, stripped the ball from him and fired it over the bar. In his career, let that be the last word. He was an ornament on the game.