A Carlow return is Brod daylight
SUCCESS IN THE NOSTRILS OF PERENNIALLY INJURED STAR
CARLOW’S bionic man wants to keep going as he finally gets to enjoy these Championship days in the spotlight.
Paul Broderick has had 10 – yes, 10 – footballrelated surgeries since he was 18. Three ankle ops, a splenectomy, a collapsed lung and a ruptured bowel.
The hugely talented marksman has played for over a decade with no spleen – that injury forced him to delay his Leaving Cert by a year. “I’ve just been unlucky,” he quipped.
The 31-year-old was only fit enough to play a couple of games for the first two years of Turlough O’brien’s revolutionary reign, but like last summer he’s revelling in Carlow’s feel-good Championship story as Sunday’s Leinster semi-final against Laois awaits.
“The attention is great for Carlow – and I’m not going to say no to it,” he smiled. “For long enough you wouldn’t have any of it. It’s nearly like a running joke among the boys in the dressing room [the injury-enforced absence], but I hung in with the squad.
“Look, I’ll go for as long as I can feel I still add.
“The injuries I’ve come from, I want to go as long as I can, regardless of what’s going on.
“For Carlow, who knows? We’re playing a team next, we’ve lost twice to [in Division Four this year], but if someone is beating you, you want to prove you can overturn it, and I genuinely don’t think too much past Sunday.”
Last year Carlow played five Championship games for the first time since 2001, but he believes the Kildare win last time out earned the team more kudos.
Broderick fired 0-9 as Carlow scored 1-14 – and didn’t hit any wides at all.
He said: “This was such a massive step, against Kildare, because a lot of people in the media would have said last year – and they were right – we only beat Division Four teams.
“And while it was huge for us to get five Championship games, this year... I know Louth are in the same division as us next year but they were coming down from Division Two. Kildare were Division One.
“For us to progress and take a step forward, we needed to do something like that, we needed to beat someone that was at least a division above us.”
Broderick would love another crack at kingpins Dublin in the provincial final, having given the Dubs problems when the sides met last year.
“We actually drew a lot of confidence from that,” he said. “It’s mad to say you can draw confidence from a 10 or 12 point defeat, but we set out to do a few things, to not concede a goal and people wasn’t sure if it was just bodies back, or organisation.
“But there was organisation to it. Dublin are streets ahead, but the prospect of Carlow playing in a Leinster final, marching behind the band, I know what we’d be up against.
“And not being disrespectful to Longford, and not looking past Laois. But it’s a great carrot.”