Patrice Diggin: 'Liz is due in less than a month... We were in dire straits that day'

"The same girl would have walked onto the field for sure. She wouldn't have let us down and that's for sure."

Wed, 05 Jan, 2022 - 18:34

Paul Keane

These are weird and wonderful times for Patrice Diggin and her Clanmaurice Camogie colleagues.

They are slated to play Raharney of Westmeath in the 2020 - yes, 2020 - All-Ireland junior club final on Sunday and, should they win and retain the title they won by also beating Raharney in 2019, they will be promoted to the intermediate ranks.

The thing is, the 2021 Munster intermediate championship begins the following weekend.

"I'd say Munster aren't too impressed with us because they have to wait until Monday to make their draws for next week's (2021) competitions!" smiled Diggin, the club and county star. Gaultier are in the same boat as well, if they win the intermediate final this weekend they'll go senior and if not they stay intermediate. As far as I know, we're playing Clooney/Quinn (in the 2021 competition) if we stay junior and there's no draws made for intermediate yet."

If you're still confused after all of that, that's okay. It's the common response. It gets even weirder. Because of the delay, and the fact that this is the 2020 All-Ireland series, not all of the Clanmaurice players are eligible to play. That reduced them to just 15 players for last month's All-Ireland semi-final against Athleague and when one of the 15 then pulled out the night before for Covid related reasons, they couldn't field a full team.

Said Diggin of the situation. "She was gutted. We were making phone calls and flicking through books to see what the story was and thank God we were able to play with 14."

At one stage, it was thought that Clanmaurice may have to finish with 15 players to stay within the rules. So Liz Houlihan, their captain for the December, 2019 All-Ireland win, threw on a jersey. The reason she wasn't playing in the first place is that she's heavily pregnant.

"In fairness to her, she had the jersey on and was ready to step over the line if we had to have 15 to finish," said Diggin. "Liz is due in less than a month! We were in dire straits that day. The same girl would have walked onto the field for sure. One of the selectors was saying he would have to stand right next to her to make sure she walked no further than over the line. She wouldn't have let us down and that's for sure."

As things stand, they're working off a panel of 17 for Sunday's final. "Including Liz, who is pregnant, so 16 in reality," said Diggin. "If you drop one you have no subs and if you drop two you're down to 14 again so you're just praying that nothing happens to anyone between here and Sunday. We had a few (Covid related) cases but they were last week so it means they'll be out of isolation by the weekend."