Frustration, flight, forgiveness and then a very frosty reception on my return to panel

I WAS GETTING impatient. I had been on the panel for three or four years, but still hadn’t nailed down a regular starting place. On the odd occasion when I did start, it wasn’t in my best position at left half-back.

I remained in and out of the team during that league (1987).We ended up finishing second in Division One behind Kerry, which qualified us for a quarter-final against Galway in Portlaoise.

I remember going down to that game – I had been picked at wingforward, again – and I felt like I was getting near breaking point. I wasn’t thrilled to be playing there.

I was going well enough in the first half, or so I thought. Then at half-time I was told I was coming off. I’m not sure why. As soon as I heard I was being substituted, I said to myself… I’m done here’. I watched the second half from the bench.

‘Why were you taken off?’ Mick Lyons asked me, when we sat down beside one another back in the dressing-room after the game. ‘What happened?’ ‘I don’t know, Mick… but I’m out of here after this’.

‘I wouldn’t blame you,’ he replied. That was it, I left.

I didn’t get any explanation as to why I was replaced. I assume they thought I wasn’t going too well, but I thought I was and some of the lads thought I was.

Selection

Maybe there was a dislike for me among the new selection team, I don’t know to this day. But that was that, I had had enough of it at that stage, starting one week, a sub the next. I was getting increasingly frustrated. I felt like I had served my time and when I was played in what I believed was my best position, I was doing well.

But, for whatever reason, I wasn’t getting the No 7 shirt. I thought that was the right thing to do, but as time went on I started to think that maybe I shouldn’t have done it. It’s funny how quickly I started to believe that I should have stayed on and proved them wrong.

Then I got a phone call from Sean asking me would I go back in? I had been away for the best part of two months at that stage. I was still playing well with the club, so I was very glad that Sean made contact. I was back in for the Kildare game in the Leinster semi-final.

Given that existed within the Meath squad at that time, my walking away didn’t go down too well.

When I returned, I got a fairly frosty reception. A lot of the lads didn’t talk to me for a long time after I came back in. Gerry McEntee didn’t forgive me until 1988, so I went a full year with Gerry! He just didn’t get on with me at all. These days, we get on the best, but it took a year for Gerry to really speak to me properly again.

To this day, the lads slag me a bit about it. But I just say to them, ‘Look lads… only for I came back, we’d have won nothing!’ That shuts them up!