As autumn greeted winter last season, the League of Ireland world was wondering where Karl Sheppard would be calling home in 2018, when that – as it turned out – was much closer to the least of his worries.

Cork City had made an astonishing impact, winning the league by halfway, and Sheppard was critical to their success, forming a third of one of the best attacking units the Irish game had seen. But the Dubliner knew that something was not right.

He was, in his own words, “playing shite”. Few seemed to notice – in truth Cork were limping over the line post-Sean Maguire and it was probably easier to hide in a struggling side – but Sheppard was so concerned he even confided in boss John Caulfield.

“I was ticking over in games without playing well. Around July or August last year, I was feeling something in that my hamstrings simply were very tight. John was saying it might be driving so much – and thought to myself that this made sense, as I spend so much time going up and down to Dublin.”

Cork won the double, Sheppard committed his future to them but that future was regressing into something a long way south of what it should have been. In the off-season, working on his UEFA ‘B’ coaching license, things got worse.

“I actually couldn’t stand up. Johnny Dunleavy was doing his own recuperation but we were sitting on these little fold-up chairs and my back was in a bad way for a few months at that stage. I’d let it go.

“I came back in after the off-season and our physio, James Peckett – who I can’t thank enough – was adamant that it couldn’t be muscular: it was going on far too long and there had to be something underlying. He sent me to a specialist, Dr Sinead Harney.”

Harney is a consultant rheumatologist. What she asked Sheppard surprised him. Had he any rashes on his skin?

“Nothing,” he replied.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah… well, apart from a little bit under my shin-guards.”

She had a look.

“You’re showing the symptoms of arthritis.”

Arthritis. It conjures memories, perhaps, of your grandparent – who may well be dead. Karl Sheppard is a professional footballer. Psoriatic arthritis is a chronic, inflammatory form of arthritis associated with psoriasis, that can cause pain, swelling and damage to joints.

“I said ‘no way’, I was basically in my mid-20s, how had it unravelled like this? The bloods came back confirming it. It was a massive shock, but at that stage I couldn’t even live everyday life normally.”

When Cork beat Bohemians in April, he was taken off shortly after the interval and was fuming at Caulfield – or so he thought.

“I was fuming coming off but I realised I was fuming at myself because I wasn’t playing right. I just said to myself: ‘I can’t play again until I feel right’.”

His treatment started to work – one injection every two weeks – and the evidence of psoriasis on his skin started to fade too. Mainly, though, it was the pain that was going away.

“The injection creates a natural fluid in the body that stops the grinding of sore bones. The pain was massive but I’m very near to normal now. Every day I am getting better.

“The last two or three games only started to feel myself. I was angry on and off the field, with back pains even sitting around the house. Ask my missus!

“I had to buy a new foam roller, which was rock solid, and did a lot of that to loosen my back, Then there were cuts on my back and I had to put deep heat into these cuts. That wasn’t pretty.”

Cork City’s doctor has, he said, “been brilliant”, telling him after four or five years he may be able to cease with the injections; otherwise it might be injections indefinitely.

“It just happened at a time when I was buzzing. We’d won the double but I was in constant pain.”

We’re speaking after his brace was key in the 4-2 win over Derry. Things are clicking into place for one of the most influential offensive players in the league in the modern era.

“I was saying to the girlfriend that I am a lot less moaning lately. Against Bray I came on and got an assist; against Waterford I was involved in two goals, and then the Derry game. I’m starting to feel able to run the way I want to and I don’t think it is a coincidence.”

The future is now for Sheppard, skipper in the win over Derry to boot.

He speaks of both Cork and Dundalk being relentless, of how he feels playing right of a three-man forward line is perhaps his best position now, of Caulfield’s “eye for signing good players” and of how he wants to set the record straight when the City side play in Europe this year.

“We really want to give the Champions League a crack now,” the former Everton striker says.

No words of a crippled man.

Piece by Johnny Ward