It’s hard to make sense of either tragic event

CRITCHLEY REVISITS DARKEST OF TIMES

Since moving to the longer format, Laochra Gael has focused as much on human interest stories as sporting glories. So when Critchley was approached, he knew that he would have to return to some dark places.

When playing for Laois against Dublin in a League game at Croke Park in November 1985, his hurley accidentally made contact with the helmet of his opponent, Paul Mulhere. Though he finished the game and shook hands with Critchley afterwards, the Dublin player, 25, took ill the following day, fell into a coma and died.

Critchley was greatly affected and regularly pores over press clippings of the time, the booklet from the funeral Mass and visits his grave.

“When I was approached first to do the programme, I was nervous about all that as to how it would pan out.

“I think they did a great job on that, they dealt with all that end of it very sensitively.

“It is a commemoration of Paul as a hurler as well to keep his memory as a hurler alive.

“Listen, it was tough going doing it but we got through it.

“You couldn’t do the programme and not deal with it.”

Critchley was touched by tragic misfortune again more recently as, in 2016, his car struck Willie Kennedy, a well known county councillor in Tipperary who was attending a funeral in Stradbally and died as a result of his injuries.

“I couldn’t avoid the [collision]. He was chatting to someone and just ran across,” he explained on the show.

Elaborating this week, he said: “For it to happen twice in your life, it’s… you just can’t put any sense to it but it happened.”