Mc Govern haunted by assault

Watching Mark Mc Govern closely at a press event in Croke Park yesterday, it was evident he is still feeling the effects of the sickening incident that befell him just over 12 months ago.

Having beckoned a communications representative towards him at the top table, a photographer was asked seconds later if he would kindly stop using his flash.

Mc Govern was there in his role as ambassador of Acquired BrainInjury Ireland, a worthy cause, especially in light of Gaelic Players’ Association statistics which show 54% of inter-county players have suffered concussion in their playing careers.

The Kelkoo clubman’s situation, however, was starker. He was left in a coma after being assaulted during a club game in San Francisco, although he happily tells us he has 95% recovered and doctors expect him to make a complete one.

But as much as he knows his story is a miracle, a lot has changed in the meantime.

“It hasn’t obviously been the same since that,” he says. “Relationships have just gone. Everything has just left me. My relationship with my family just isn’t the same as it was, obviously.

“Friends obviously had to see me as... to try to rebuild me as a person because I have changed a bit.

“My girlfriend and I have just grown apart, we have broken up because of this. So many things have happened because of it.”

He went back to San Francisco in May for a few weeks where he received check-ups.

“The doctor asked me to go up to the general hospital where I spent most of the time in a coma. I refused. I didn’t want to go back up there. I had too many bad memories. I’d be scared, I suppose.”

He had initially intended to spend the summer in San Francisco but thought better of it in the end.

“Even three weeks was long enough. I wasn’t fit to… too many bad memories. Sleep at night wasn’t great.

“I was always kind of worried going around the city in case I would bump into the guy who did it.”

The image of that man burns inside him. When he woke up from his five-week coma he was shown a picture of the assailant.

The memories of what had happened came flooding back.

“Straight from the throw-up he was hitting me from the word go. Everywhere I turned he was there, hitting me.

“Then our defence got the ball out and were working it up to the forward line. I ran forward to support and the next thing was I woke up in San Francisco General Hospital.”

Rehab in the US was seven days a week, while there were three hours of speech therapy and physiotherapy during weekdays.

When he arrived home to Fermanagh in October, the rehab was whittled down to three times a week and now it will be just every Monday in the Erne Hospital.

He’s also done a bit in the hyperbaric oxygen chambers on Dublin’s Castle Strand St, which has aided people with traumatic brain injuries in their recovery.

Although he gets back his driving licence next week, he still suffers problems with short-term memory, cognitive thinking and word finding.

“If I was trying to say a word it might require three or four words to explain that word because I can’t find it,” he reveals.

A former Fermanagh panellist, he is a coach now and remains thankful, if embarrassed. for the wealth of support and fundraising he received.

But the fact he won’t play football again hurts. “I don’t think that frustration will ever go away. I was told by three or four doctors that I will never play football again which is horrible.”