Richie Power says that the opportunity to prove his doubters wrong was his reason for pulling on a Kilkenny jersey again in 2014.
Power endured a difficult 2013 campaign with the Cats and said a conscious decision was made on his behalf to try and change that this past season.
"For me personally 2013 as a whole was a tough year, form wise and everything else," Power said in today's Irish Independent.
"To come back in 2014, I just said I wanted to give myself that opportunity to be the best that I could be, to be ruthless and selfish about it and get myself in that position to do that.
"You have a lot of doubters in Kilkenny and they would be questioning Richie Power. Does he have the bottle for it? Does he have the determination? That drives you on. It would have been very easy to walk away.
"I would have walked away with six All-Ireland medals and they would clap you on the back and say 'you had a great career'. But I wasn't happy with that. That was a huge aspect of my decision to go back."
He added: "At the beginning of the year every one of us set a target that we wanted to be All-Ireland champions and, you know, it was to prove people wrong, to prove everyone wrong," he revealed.
"People were saying that it was the end of this team and we certainly didn't want to go out the way we did last July."
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