TADHG KENNELLY admitted yesterday that he considered packing his bags and heading home to Ireland as he contemplated the prospect of another extended stretch on the sideline.

For the second successive year, Kennelly had dislocated his knee cap, an injury that saw him miss nine matches in 2007, so he kind of knew the prognosis. And the anguish etched on his face on Sunday wasn't due to the pain from trying to bash his left knee cap back into place but because of the frustration at what lay ahead. "I don't know what I've done," Kennelly said yesterday. "Maybe I've been in this country too long, 10 years now, so my 'Luck of the Irish' is running out.

"I wasn't in the right head space on Sunday night when I got home. At the time you want to be on your own, you want to be in your own space, and I got into the rooms afterwards and I just wanted to leave straight away. I didn't want to hang around after the game and have the blokes coming up to me.

"As Roosy said, I thought Gaelic Football could be a lot easier, and to go home. I suppose I did [think about it], but it was more of a case of what have I done to deserve this more than anything else. I thought I'd turned the corner."

Kennelly said his mother had told him to "come back home - look what they are doing to you".

"I've heard that a few times now," he said. "But this injury, it could happen any time. It could happen at training. She's getting used to them [injuries] as well as I am."

Kennelly was relieved on Monday after scans showed no major damage to the ligaments. It means that while he will miss this Saturday's match against Port Adelaide, he could be back the following week for the home clash with Richmond.

"There was a lot more trauma involved in last year's dislocation, this one was quite simple really," he said. "As the [Sunday] evening went on I was able to walk and put pressure on it. Last year I wasn't able to do that at all.

"I did a little bit of ligament damage but no medial and no bone damage. When the knee cap comes out you can chip a bone on the way out and on the way back in, but it didn't, so something that could have been very bad turned out pretty good."

When Kennelly suffered a similar injury last year he returned after two weeks, only to miss another seven later in the season.

"I took a lot more chances with it last year, too," he said. "The damage was a lot more severe and I was bit stubborn and pig-headed and I just wanted to play and the team wasn't going too well at the time, but this year it's a lot different injury."

Kennelly also revealed yesterday that earlier in the match he had dislocated his shoulder and went to the rooms to have it put back in place. He says it happens from time to time since he underwent shoulder surgery two seasons ago.

Last Sunday's match was a tale of two knees, with Nick Malceski making a miraculous comeback 13 weeks after rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament. That return was tempered by Kennelly's injury. "I said to Nick when he came on, you've got a second opportunity to play this season, make the most of it and enjoy it," Kennelly said. "I kind of thought about what I said [to him] after the game and said it to myself when I got my results back."