The 32-year-old Ballygunner goalkeeper stepped away from Waterford almost three years ago, aged 29 at the time, as the time commitment left him challenged to balance his lifestyle between career, family and sport.
More players, among them his former Waterford colleague Austin Gleeson, are weighing up time away from the game and O’Keeffe, who ruled out a return to inter-county hurling last year, doesn’t see that changing anytime soon.
“You try and build a career for yourself, you have a young family at home as well,” he said.
“There are only 24 hours in the day but the amount of stuff you have to fit into that 24 hours seems to go up and up all the time.
“I think you’re seeing it more and more now. The majority of county players aren’t going too far past 31 or 32 these days. I think it’s a lifestyle thing at the moment. I’m not sure if I see that changing.”
O’Keeffe and Ballygunner saw off the challenge of Na Piarsaigh on Sunday in a Munster club semi-final, keeping them on course for the province’s first hurling three-in-a-row.
After years in Na Piarsaigh’s slipstream Ballygunner have now beaten them in their last three meetings, the 2018 Munster final and last year’s semi-final.
“We tried to climb that mountain a lot of times and got knocked back often in a Munster final, which just makes it very, very hard to get back up and go again,” said O’Keeffe.
“Once we finally did get over the line, there was a bit more freedom and I think we got a bit more belief in ourselves that we can do it.
We did it before so you try and replicate that again. But there was a lot of heartbreak definitely in the build-up trying to get over Munster for the first time.”
Having won the last 10 Waterford championships, Ballygunner are well conditioned to pursue a Munster club championships and have now made it to six successive finals (there was no provincial club championship in 2020 due to Covid).
But they’ve had to adjust to a schedule that now see the Waterford championship completed by early to mid September.
“We go full-blooded for the Waterford county championship every year. With the way the Waterford championship is run, it does allow us to get a bit of a break afterwards.
“We had two weeks totally off after the Waterford championship just to recharge the batteries.
“Then we went back into a bit of hard training, almost like a mini-pre-season. There are pros and cons to that.
“Obviously you could end up being rusty on the day or you can say it freshens you up. Sometimes the result tells you which it was in hindsight. We’ve managed it quite well in the last three years.”