Did Cork turn its back on Diarmuid Duggan?

HE’S played with Cork at every grade from Under-16 to All-Ireland SFC semi-finals in Croke Park, but when a persistent hip injury finished defender Diarmuid Duggan’s career, friends in high places were hard to find.

The Ilen Rovers man ended up funding his own operation, and being dead-ended by officials in a bid to recoup some of the almost €10,000 he spent trying to revive his football career and improve his quality of health. His loyalty to his county has left him €7,000 out of pocket, the GPA stumping up €3,000 from its benevolent fund.

Today, Duggan goes public on his situation, not to retrieve some of the money he spent, but as a warning to other inter-county players that, in some counties, nobody’s too bothered when you’re on the scrapheap.

He has also revealed details of an impassioned letter he penned to Cork secretary Frank Murphy at the end of 2010, desperately seeking a resolution to the issue.

In the letter, he writes: “It’s not just my belief, but a commonly acknowledged one that its players should not be “out of pocket” as a result of them dedicating their lives to playing at the highest level and in particular with one of the biggest GAA counties in the country.”

In that letter, he adds: “When I left the panel as a result of the injury, I regret to say that as far as I was concerned the County Board washed their hands completely clean of it, offering no financial help whatsoever. Was it a case that even though I got injured playing with a Cork team, I was no longer needed and therefore not worth the hassle or the money? I find it very difficult to believe and accept the contrary and I’ve always considered myself a reasonable and open-minded person, always trying to see the good in people and situations. Even writing this letter doesn’t sit comfortably with me, but I feel like I’m left with very little alternative such is the enormity of the sum of money of which I am out of pocket.

“Were I to end up getting no financial help, I still don’t see myself as someone who would lambast the GAA at every chance. My whole life has been entwined with the GAA and almost every friend I have is as a result of my association with the games I love. However, now finding myself in this unfortunate situation, it’s certainly far easier to empathise with those who mockingly call the GAA the “Grab All Association”.

Even now, his stance is the same: “I don’t think it is right that you leave an inter-county panel to sort an injury and the Cork County Board then don’t reimburse you. The diagnosis from the surgeon in Coventry was that the injury was brought on as a result of strenuous inter-county training. My injury occurred when I was playing for Cork. I don’t think it’s right that once you’re gone, you end up on the scrapheap. It’s quite a substantial amount of money to be down but that’s not the primary reason for talking about this. I’m just hoping to increase awareness.”

IN July 2008, Duggan was man-of-the-match in Cork’s Munster final win over Kerry. Three and a half years on, he can’t even stand in goal for a five-a-side soccer game with friends.

Damian Griffin, a world-renowned hip surgeon based in Coventry, operated on Duggan in February 2010 and has diagnosed that the injury was a result of the demands placed on him during his inter-county football career with Cork. Duggan had a condition called ‘Femoral Acetabular Impingement’ whereby a lesion or bump on the ball part of the ball and socket joint in a hip jams on the rim of the socket as movement occurs. Intensive training provokes this condition and in his case caused irreparable damage to his hip joint. He is now left with arthritis in his hip and faces a hip replacement in the future.

His career may be over, but the financial and physical pain continues.

Duggan voluntarily left the Cork panel in July 2009 in an effort to regain fitness. The Cork County Board paid for an operation he underwent in March 2009 in Dublin, yet that failed to cure the problem. Determined to get back playing, Duggan then incurred costs of nearly €10,000 in order to find a solution to the problem, but the board have thus far been unwilling to help pay for that.

“Ger Lane was always my initial contact (as Cork football liaison officer) and I told him before I went to England for the operation in February 2010 that I had to get it done. I’d a letter from Dr Con Murphy (Cork team medic) backing that up. I told him how much it was going to cost and I asked if I would be able to get a cheque to cover it. He said he’d try to sort that out and he got in contact with (board secretary) Frank Murphy. I was in regular contact with Ger after that but each time he told me he was having some difficulty in getting it sanctioned but to leave it with him. Eventually the day before I went to Coventry for the operation, I rang him again. ‘Ger, I need this now or I’ll have to pay for it out of my own pocket’. He said he still hadn’t managed in getting it sanctioned for me, that I was going to have to pay for it myself and that they’d try to sort it out when I returned.

“That was when I started to doubt I’d get anything. But I needed the operation for my own health. I felt I didn’t have a choice. If I didn’t get it, my quality of living would have deteriorated much more quickly and the need for a hip replacement would have been brought forward. I had no health insurance; I always thought that I’m a healthy young man and anything to do with sport, I’m covered as I’m playing for the county. I’ve since taken out health insurance with a couple of years but obviously it doesn’t help me in this situation.

“I was in regular contact with Ger again after the operation. Eventually I was told ‘I don’t think you’re going to get that’. The county board had said the insurance wouldn’t cover it because it was the same injury as the one for which I had the first operation. When I had the initial hip injury, I reported it and the county board paid for an operation in Dublin to remove torn cartilage which was believed to be the problem. But after a few months of rehabilitation, the injury still hadn’t improved and it became obvious that something else was the problem. For the second operation the county board claimed that because the injury had been reported after the allocated time frame (that the insurance company requires) from when I initially got injured, they then couldn’t claim back for it and they were unwilling to pay for it themselves.”

HIS persistent efforts to find a medical cure for the injury have left him significantly out of pocket. The GPA, through the players body’s benevolent/hardship fund, have given Duggan a cheque for €3,000 but the Ilen Rovers club man is still facing a substantial shortfall of approximately €6,700 with no sign of GAA chiefs reimbursing him for those costs.

Through the GPA, Duggan finally found an organisation willing to assist.

“Conor Counihan did a bit of work for me and he also got onto GAA president Christy Cooney to see whether the GAA could do anything. I was asked to apply to the GPA and wrote out the details of my injury. They said they’d check to see whether I was eligible for their benevolent fund and pretty quickly came back to me with a cheque for €3,000. I was very grateful to the GPA as I felt they didn’t owe me anything. I remember Conor (Counihan) ringing me afterwards and saying it would be great if the Cork county board would even match that amount.”