One of those players who flash across the skies leaving a brief vapour trail behind them. One of those names that invade the hurling public's consciousness for a while without ever quite managing to colonise it. Conor Phelan.

Came on as a sub in the second half of the 2003 All Ireland final and gave the assist for the assist for the decisive Kilkenny goal, then hit 1-4 against Galway in the under21 decider at Semple Stadium seven days later. Came on as a sub in the second half of the 2004 All Ireland final on an afternoon when there were no Kilkenny assists and no Kilkenny goals, but did win another under-21 medal six days later. Was preparing for the 2005 All Ireland semi-final when a faulty valve was discovered in his heart.

Conor Phelan. The forgotten Kilkennyman. Now you remember him.

It should have been the end of his intercounty career and it probably was. It should have been the end of his hurling career and mercifully it wasn't. He began 2006 assuming he'd never pick up an ash plant again. He finishes it having won his third Fitzgibbon Cup medal and lined out in a county intermediate final. Not a case of a cup that runneth over, more an instance of a glass that at least is half-full. For the moment, that'll do Phelan.

He knows it'll have to. This is not a matter in which he has a choice.

Noel Hickey's temporary misfortune proved to be the touchpaper for Phelan's ongoing misfortune. After Hickey was found to have a virus near his heart following the 2005 Leinster championship, all the Kilkenny panellists were sent for tests. Phelan's test showed an irregularity in his heart. The following weeks and months were a daze of confusion and worry and sleepless nights, of consultants and specialists, of diagnoses and second opinions.

Was his condition lifethreatening? No. Was it career-ending? Apparently yes. Did it impinge on his quality of life? For a while, most definitely. The very fact that he felt and looked so well was the worst part of it. It still is. "I've no symptoms, no pain. That's really hard to take. If it was hurting you'd say there must be something wrong. But when it's not your decision, when you're told by someone else to stop hurling, that's what hurts." All the more so when one is not only an All Ireland medallist but has also lined out at Lansdowne Road in a Leinster Schools Cup rugby semi-final ("I'm very glad I got to play there"), as Phelan did at second centre with Cistercian, Roscrea in 2002. Heck, even his course at Waterford IT was business with leisure and recreation; that's why he applied for it in the first place.

Remove sport from his existence and it would, he says, "be a very dull life".

Two years a minor with Kilkenny, he'd harboured hopes, though nothing more substantial than that, of making the county under-21 team in due course. As it transpired, after Brian Cody and Noel Skehan had seen his star rise in the Fitzgibbon Cup arena for Waterford IT in the spring of 2003, the seniors came knocking first. The first night in training, Phelan was thrown in on Noel Hickey in a two-man full-forward line:

welcome to reality, young man. Such was the intensity of the hurling, after 30 minutes he had to take off his helmet, which he never does, and come up for air. "I was absolutely shattered. This was a step up again from Fitzgibbon Cup hurling."

He learned to cope and made his championship debut against Dublin in that summer's Leinster semi-final at Nowlan Park. In the context of Kilkenny's mode of expression at the time, he was a perfect fit for the forward line: brawny, direct, frillfree, good under the dropping ball. As in rugby, so too in hurling; point him in the direction of the nearest barn door and Phelan would go through it for a short cut. He ended the year the possessor of Fitzgibbon Cup, National League, All Ireland senior and All Ireland under21 medals. If you never play another match, Tim Phelan told his son after the under-21 final, you've done well for yourself. The wisdom of his words didn't sink in at the time. It's sunk in since.

The support of his family, friends and Kilkenny county board chairman Ned Quinn helped Phelan through last winter. The arrival of spring had him twitching for fresh grass. But what to do when he wasn't allowed to hurl? If for no other reason than to allow his mind find final peace, as a last resort he rolled the dice with a visit to Professor William McKenna, a heart specialist in Harley Street in London . . . and received a guarded green light to go back playing. Tim Phelan was all encouragement. Monica Phelan, in the way of mothers, was understandably more cautious. Astronomers reported sightings of a strange object located somewhere over the moon the same week. It turned out to be Phelan junior.

In the event, 2006's pieces fell together better in many ways for Conor Phelan than they might have. They certainly fell together differently. Once he'd received the all-clear, WIT, who had previously considered making him a selector in order to keep him involved, had no qualms about handing him the number 11 jersey for the Fitzgibbon Cup, a competition they won with a demolition of UCD in the final in Pairc Ui Rinn. "I don't think we'd have done it without Conor, " muses Colm Bonnar, the WIT coach. "He filled a huge hole for us. And the pace of the hurling at that time of the year was ideal for him.

Fast, but not the really fast pace of summer."

Accentuate the positives, whatever they may be, Dr McKenna had told Phelan.

He did. If being able to play with WIT again was the first positive, pulling on the maroon shirt of Clara and reaching the Kilkenny intermediate final was an even bigger plus. "Had I been looking on from the stand instead of playing . . . now that would have killed me."

That wasn't the end of it.

The shutting of the intercounty door contained its silver lining in the form of the opening of the summerabroad door, an experience he'd never had the opportunity to sample before. Phelan spent three months in Boston, working with a builder. He hung out in Allston, won a Boston championship medal with Wexford and watched the All Ireland final with four or five other Kilkenny lads in a Philadelphia bar called Tir na nOg the weekend of the North American GAA finals, predictably surrounded by Corkmen. Worse, by Corkmen singing songs.

A hard match to watch?

"Yes. I don't know what word you'd put on it. Not sadness.

More a wistfulness. If I hadn't had that check-up, might I have been out there? That sort of thing. But I soon got caught up in watching the match, and it was obvious from early on how much Kilkenny were up for it. The hunger for every ball. Three men piling into every tackle.

Even the Kilkenny fans were hungry. It shows what a couple of years of not winning can do."

Phelan arrived home from the US on the Wednesday and met up with his old teammates in Langton's on the Thursday night. That's when it hit him. Hit him that, in a very small way, he had been part of this. In 2002 he'd shouted for Kilkenny as an ordinary supporter, without knowing any of the players. In 2006 he'd shouted for them from the other side of the fence. "You know the players. You've been there yourself. That gives it a new meaning. A nostalgia."

Physically and mentally he's in the best of form these days. His social life has regained its old momentum.

His health is monitored every four months. If anything gets worse he'll stop. If not, he'll see where hurling takes him.

He has more than enough to keep him busy at it is, what with helping out with WIT's Ashbourne Cup camogie team and acting as chief researcher for a book the college GAA club are publishing next year to mark their silver jubilee. In the long term, he intends to become a PE teacher. By then he trusts that Clara, who reached the aforementioned intermediate final with a team containing 11 players under the age of 23, will have regained their senior status.

Lurking some distance behind all these hopes and responsibilities is the dream that barely dares to speak its name. Conor Phelan lining out in a black and amber jersey again.

It's unlikely, he accepts (and how well a straight-lines forward like Phelan would fit in with Kilkenny's new attacking vernacular is another story).

Unlikely yet not, he reckons, impossible. "With science and medicine being what they are, you'd like to think there's some hope there. Maybe I'll meet a nice cardiologist who'll let me go back hurling.

"But it's one thing being allowed play again. It would be another thing getting your fitness back, getting your place back, making up for lost time. And there are so many younger lads out there raring to go. But Brian Corcoran came back, so there's always hope. If you lose hope, you don't have a lot of things to look forward to. You have to be optimistic, don't you?"

Conor Phelan. His glass filling up again.