'If I need a bit of help or I’m not feeling great, I always ask Dillon for a hand and I feel it helps'
ONE YEAR ON: Dillon Quirke of Clonoulty / Rossmore celebrates with former Tipperary hurling star and former Monaghan hurling manager Joe Hayes. after the Tipperary Water County Senior Hurling Championship Final between Clonoulty / Rossmore and Nenagh Éire Óg at Semple Stadium in 2018. Pic: Ray McManus/Sportsfile
An open invitation has been issued to visit Clonoulty at 5 o’clock on Saturday evening where the club will commemorate the one-year anniversary of Dillon Quirke’s passing.
Captaining Clonoulty-Rossmore in a senior hurling championship group game against Kilruane MacDonaghs in FBD Semple Stadium last August 5, Dillon collapsed and died playing the game he adored, less than four months after breaking into the Tipperary team.
With their daughters Shannon and Kellie, Dan and Hazel Quirke will lead the remembering of their son and brother’s brief but brilliant life. GAA president Larry McCarthy will unveil a plaque and officially christen The Dillon Quirke GAA grounds.
As Dillon’s uncle and team manager, Tipperary great Declan Ryan has admitted, going to the Thurles venue has been a wrench for the family since but Dan says the most difficult journey is the one closer to home. It’s there where Dillon was most alive. “What I actually find tough is going to our own hurling field on nights when our seniors are training because Dillon isn’t there.
“Even to this day, I don’t go down to the field that much anymore. Tommy Dunne was taking a training session there recently and I went down but I only stayed for 10 minutes, I found it difficult. If a situation is difficult, I won’t walk away but I won’t make it any more difficult.
“Hazel and myself often visit the grave, it’s a fabulous grave and there’s peace and quiet there. Any of the Tipp matches are tough but time will heal that, please God. That’s the main thing.”
Shannon recently returned home from Australia and that helps, Dan says. “When we’re together, it’s good but when you’re on your own, at night and when you wake up in the morning, that’s when it’s the toughest. Generally, we’re doing quite good, I think.”
Over the 12 months, Hazel and Dan have received advice from people who have experienced similar tragedies but something a connection on Hazel’s side of the family said stuck with them the most. “Maybe it’s a bit unusual but she’d lost a couple of children herself, God bless her. She just said to us always remember the people who are still there, not just the people who are gone.
“She used to spend a lot of her time going on about the children she had lost and nearly forgot about the children she still had. That resonated with Hazel and myself and something we would think about quite a bit.”
To make life a little easier for themselves, the Quirkes sold their successful Town House Deli business based in Cashel, Clonmel, Thurles and Tipperary town a few months after Dillon’s passing. “Dillon was involved with us in the delis and he loved it. We could dovetail. If he ever needed time off for training or whatever, there was no issue and likewise if we needed time, it was great.
“There’s a lot of pressure in the retail business nowadays, someone came in with an interest, we thought it was the best thing to do and we don’t regret it. I do miss it sometimes but it has taken pressure off us and it’s nice to spend time with the girls as well.”
Last month, the four of them teamed up for a golf classic in Newlands Golf Club and ended up winning the event. With some help from their rogue Dillon, perhaps. “It was the first time we ever played together,” smiles Dan. “Funny enough, we were about to tee off from the ninth tee-box when all of a sudden a big branch fell down beside us. Hazel said, ‘There’s Dillon, he’s at it again’ because he was always up to tricks.
“We were going in through a driveway recently and a branch fell down beside us. I don’t know if we imagine these things but we do feel he’s there with us all of the time. If I need a bit of help or I’m not feeling great, I always ask Dillon for a hand and I feel it helps.”
Dan is grateful McCarthy will officially open the grounds in his son’s name this evening. He can be appreciative and yet remain completely bewildered and disappointed that the central GAA authorities refused Tipperary and Limerick permission to wear The Dillon Quirke Foundation logo on their jerseys for their Munster SHC, Round 4 game in Thurles in May.
The kit would have been auctioned off in aid of the foundation established by Hazel, Shannon, Kellie and Dan, aimed at providing cardiac screening for all GAA players over the age of 12. Instead, the teams wore warm-up singlets carrying the iconic representation of Dillon holding his hurley and red helmet aloft after Clonoulty-Rossmore’s 2018 Tipperary senior hurling final win over Nenagh Éire Óg.
In a game that turned out to be one of the best of the championship, the counties drew and the reaction to the GAA’s decision was excoriating. The matter was raised again recently by Joe Canning last Sunday week on The Sunday Game who labelled the call as “a bit of a disgrace”.
“All these county players have been so supportive,” remarks Dan, who is keen to dwell on the positives. “We will be doing different county jerseys from March 1 next year. We’re really going from strength to strength. We’re hoping to pilot the screening in our own club in late September, early October and that will be the start of it. All in all, the foundation has been a big help. We’re going to kick it on as best we can.”
Dan knows the difference the charity is already making.
“In the last six months, we’ve got a couple of phone calls about people who had issues. In Kilkenny, a young fella went into hospital with a burst appendix. One of the nurses mentioned the foundation and asked would he think of having his heart tested and they found an issue. His dad rang me and he said if only for the foundation they wouldn’t have found out that. These stories are great. We’ll probably hear more as we get bigger and it’s great.”
From golf events such as the Circet All-Ireland GAA Golf Challenge in Killarney in October to players auctioning off some of their most famous jerseys to poems being written in Dillon’s honour, the foundation’s initiatives are bountiful.
“We’ve people coming to us to organise events in London and the States. Who knows where it will end but the bottom line is we’re saving people’s lives. The foundation is growing and it’s great that so many want to be involved with it.”
It's been a tough week, Dan readily acknowledges, and this evening is bound to be emotional, perhaps overwhelming for the family, but for the right reasons.
“He’ll be looking down at us laughing at all the fuss being made of him. It feels like it’s going to be a celebration of his life and what the club have done for us as a family in naming the grounds after Dillon was such a lovely thing to do. It will never be forgotten and for GAA president Larry McCarthy to come down and open it.”
Dying as a hurler, there was no purer way for Dillon to go. A family steeped in the game, they know that.
“Dillon had passed away before he had hit the ground. It was devastating for us but it was a lovely way for Dillon to pass away, to pass away playing hurling in Semple Stadium of all places.
“It gives us solace because he could have had suffered with cancer or something else. He had an issue with his heart but he was fit, he was healthy. We had 24 wonderful years with Dillon. He never gave us an ounce of trouble. He was a fabulous son. That’s the way we’ll always remember him.”
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