The pain and gain of Shane

"Yeah, it was a bit weird seeing it all again.”

In the Derryman’s understated, laconic way, Shane Duffy is talking about the moment he stepped onto the Gannon Park pitch in Malahide on Sunday — the first time he’d been back to the scene of the freak training ground accident which almost claimed his life in May of 2010.

Having been called up to an extended senior squad by Giovanni Trapattoni, the then 18-year-old centre-half was taking part in a training game against the Irish Juniors when a heavy collision with goalkeeper Adrian Walsh left him flat-out on the ground. The full extent of the damage would only emerge in a startling medical bulletin the following day which told how Duffy had ruptured a liver artery and, after being rushed to the Mater hospital by ambulance, needed life-saving emergency surgery.