Na Piarsaigh and Limerick hurler David Breen says working in a professional sports environment has helped him improve as a hurler.

Breen is the ‎Lead Academy Physiotherapist at Leinster Rugby, a position he took up in September 2014. While he admits it has been demanding to combine such a job with an elite GAA career, he has also felt the benefits in terms of what he has picked up in the professional surrounds.

"You learn to train a lot better yourself, especially in the strength and conditioning. You are working with a lot of S&C coaches who have a lot of experience and they know how to manage players and you are just taking advice from them," he said.

"In GAA, it is a bit unregulated in terms of who works with what teams and what their qualifications are whereas in professional sport, you have to have a decent CV to get hands on these athletes. You are managed quite closely. Dan Tobin is head of strength and conditioning in Leinster and he is a guy I would have taken advice from the very first week I came into Leinster. And it has stood to me as well and some stuff that I will be able to impart onto younger players in the club at some stage, eventually."

Breen's role with the Leinster academy players often merges with the Leinster senior squad, due to periods when the panels join together for training. He travels regularly with the senior squad to matches - he was in Cardiff most recently - and he says that those professional demands have sometimes affected his hurling.

"Usually the ones where they are on a Friday night is a bit easier because the team travels on the Thursday and you get back maybe 10 or 11 on the Friday night.

"So then you still have some of the weekend left and all I do is let Shane O’Neill, our manager, know my schedule in advance and he tries to put training on around that. There’s some weekends that there’s no getting away from it, you have to write off the weekend because of work."

Yet, despite his physiotherapy background, Breen has not been spared injuries. During Na Piarsaigh's run to the All-Ireland final, Breen has had regular spells of absence through a broken shin, a broken hand and a broken foot - "I've a nice collection of x-rays in my Iphone," he jokes.

He played on a shin injury in the Limerick semi-final against Kilmallock, and missed the county final and early stages of the Munster campaign as a result. Then he came on as a sub in the Munster final win against Ballygunner despite having had pins and wires in his hand, which was in a cast, in advance of the game.

He admits that played against medical advice, and the fact that he played despite his own grounding as a physio is an indicator of the lengths a player will go to to play a big game.

"Yeah, I got a bit of a doing coming in after the Munster final, when they saw me coming on for the final 15 minutes of the game where I had been wearing a cast earlier on that week," he said.

"But they understand the situation and the head physio there (at Leinster), Gareth Farrell, has been pretty good to me in that sense, I have to be physically able to do my job too, there is no such thing as ringing in sick or I need five or six weeks off in that environment so I think the players are pretty understanding as to what's at stake.

"But that would have been one of the best reasons that I stepped away from Limerick this year, because I have to show a commitment to my job too and hurling is definitely not going to pay the bills."

As Breen, 30, says, he stepped away from the Limerick inter-county scene this year to focus on his work with Leinster. For now, his sporting outlook is obviously centred on St Patrick's Day and the prospect of a first ever All-Ireland club title for his club Na Piarsaigh, a pursuit which he says has energised some of his charges in Leinster.

"We have a bit of a following going there, especially in the academy, We have a good few of the boys shouting for Na Piarsaigh now, they have made it very clear they are not shouting for Limerick, they are shouting for Na Piarsaigh. It is great, especially for lads, some of them wouldn't necessarily have an interest in GAA, they are tuning in and watching the matches, so hopefully we will have a few of them there on Paddy's Day."