Vaccine gives Antrim star Paddy Cunningham 'peace of mind'

Paddy Cunningham: 'Thankfully I’m fully vaccinated now'

Antrim footballer Paddy Cunningham admits that receiving his Covid-19 vaccination jabs is a huge relief as a Crohn’s sufferer in the high risk category.

The 2009 Ulster final captain turned 36 yesterday and has vowed to retire from Antrim this year but will play out his remaining days with a smile on his face.

That’s because after a “very worrying” year or so of trying to avoid the Covid virus, the teacher is now fully vaccinated. The Lamh Dhearg man lit up social media last weekend when his decisive sliced point off his left foot from the left wing against Louth in the Allianz League was widely viewed.

Latest | #AllianzLeagues Divs4 🏐
38mins 2nd Half
An Lú : 3-8(17)
Aontroim: 1-13(16)

Lovely score from Paddy Cunningham👏🏻 pic.twitter.com/t3MUisn3Tu

— Antrim GAA (@AontroimGAA) May 15, 2021

The stoppage time score ignited a late revival from Antrim who went on to win by a point, denying Mickey Harte a maiden win as Louth boss.

Asked if he and his family are living a less stressful life since the vaccination, Cunningham nodded.

“Yeah, I think to be honest we are,” he said. “Covid was very worrying. Obviously I was shielding over the first and second lockdown but thankfully I’m fully vaccinated now. We’re lucky in the north, the vaccination process has been very fluid and I was high risk so I was fully vaccinated about six weeks ago. To be fair, that does give you more confidence and reassurance.

You still have to be careful but it definitely gives you that piece of mind.

“And the R rate in the north seems to be a bit lower than what it is in the south. Hopefully the south can catch up with that and push on in terms of the vaccination. Obviously there’s alarm bells at the moment with the Indian variant coming in and we don’t know how that will react with the vaccination. So we just need to be careful.”

What’s certain for Cunningham, who hit the inter-county scene in the mid-2000s, is that this will be his last season with Antrim. He came out of a previous retirement to play for Lenny Harbison in 2020, maintaining it was for one season only. But after starting six of their eight League and Championship games, scoring 0-33, new boss Enda McGinley begged him to stay on.

“This is 100% my last year, 100%,” said Cunningham. “Probably the most difficult thing of all are the things that you’re missing. I have a young lad who is eight years of age, he had his first soccer match on Saturday, before we played Louth. I was just glad we weren’t meeting until 11.30 so I could go and watch it at 9 in the morning.

“My wife has done the heavy lifting for such a long time now, she’s been a tremendous support. That’s probably the most difficult thing now, the things that you’d miss out on.

"Now that he’s playing soccer and Gaelic, you’re not getting to take him to training and you’re not involved so that’s probably a large part of the decision, separate to my age. It’s just time to go back home and put a shift in.”