The Big Interview: After the darkness, Ronan Clarke now sees only positives

In August, former Armagh All-Ireland winner and All Star Ronan Clarke collided with a goalpost and spent five days in a coma. The accident has changed his outlook on life ...

If it had been the usual kind of injury, his mind would be tormented right now, the game having been again taken away from him. You’d probably some idea alright that Ronan Clarke loved football when you’d have heard his coma-inducing injury happened in the middle of his honeymoon. That himself and Michelle were back from ten days in melting Malta so he could get in a training session ahead of the club’s quarter-final championship clash with Maghery and play the match before the pair of them were supposed to head away again for a few days in Rome.

What you probably wouldn’t have known was his obsession with the game meant that on the night before his wedding, he headed straight from the rehearsal to play a league game against Dromintee. While anyone else would have skipped it for fear of injury, he was desperate to play because of injury. After missing out on four years of football he just wanted to get in as much of it as he possibly could.