Quinn reveals Croke cold shoulder

Loughgiel Shamrocks joint captains Damian Quinn, left, and Johnny Campbell

A couple of weeks before their All-Ireland Club Senior Hurling final, the Shamrocks were vexed.
“We had been down to play Wexford u-21s in a challenge game in Dublin,” the Loughgiel goalie DD Quinn recalled. “We went along to Croke Park, someone had made contact anyway.

“When we got there, you just got the feeling they didn’t want you there. We were on a tight schedule that we had to keep because we were meeting Wexford on the far side of Dublin, but we had to wait and wait about in the car park for about half an hour while a tour guide come and take us around the field. You weren’t even allowed to step onto the grass, you had to go right out around the outside.

“You got the impression, maybe they didn’t mean it or anything, that they didn’t want you there. Coolderry got a warm-up, they got a good half-hour training session on it the next day. We were asked if we wanted to come back down the next day we could have half an hour after the camogie finals. Maybe I’m over-thinking things, but as a player you thought maybe they don’t want us down here, and it’s a sad thing too.

“Hurling’s their sort of sport down south, and they look at us as sort of foreigners coming in and playing the game.”

The full story can be read in the current issue of Gaelic Life, published March 29. To get your copy, click the subscribe button on this page, or buy one in your local newsagent now!