Iain Corbett’s football obsession: ‘There were a few dark days’

The Treaty stalwart has called time on his intercounty football career after 14 seasons.

GENERATION GAME: Limerick’s Iain Corbett and his son Dylan dejected after the game Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/James Crombie

The pain was total. Iain Corbett had pulled hamstrings before but this was another level entirely. He was lying across the back seat of his manager’s car, staring at the roof lining, wondering if he would ever play again.

It was in the first half of a 2024 Limerick senior football championship match that the Newcastle West stalwart went down. The eventual diagnosis would show two hamstring tendons ripped off the bone, known as the Paul O’Connell injury in these parts.

Limerick manager Jimmy Lee, also a Newcastle West clubman, was pitch-side when it happened. He carted him across to doctor Stephen Lucey. By Monday morning, Corbett was in the Santry clinic.

“Then you have a few dark days,” he recalls now, having just announced his retirement from intercounty football after 14 seasons.

“You can’t walk and everyone is texting you, ‘best of luck.’ You think: was that my last game of football? Will I play with Newcastle West again? Will I play with Limerick again?

“I could hardly move. I couldn’t get upstairs. We moved a mattress down so I could sleep in the sitting room. We had a nine-month-old child who I couldn’t bend down to pick up. There were a few dark days now. Firstly, it was just about getting back to work, then get back playing with Dylan.” 

When it came to football, he couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t walk away either. Throughout his career, Limerick football has been a cycle of rise and ruin: build it up, watch it fall, start again. The 2024 campaign ended in a 17-point defeat to Sligo, the county tumbling back into Division 4.

“It was probably in my mind the last few years. But you are conscious that you want to leave the jersey in a better place. The last two years weren’t leaving the jersey in a better place.

“We’d two difficult years and with the injury, getting back in any capacity was going to be difficult. I probably struggled… I’m just not at the level, fitness wise, that I was prior to the injury. I wanted to get through this year and finish on a high. The high was just getting back playing intercounty football.” 

In 2012, he joined a panel that had made successive Munster finals in two years previous. Corbett started at wing-forward in the provincial semi-final as they went down by a single point against Clare. That side was littered with football men of substance. Limerick hurling coach Paul Kinnerk started in midfield. Football coach Pa Ranahan was wing-back.

“Seanie Buckley, Steven Lavin, Ger Collins, Johnny McCarthy. You were questioning yourself in that dressing room. Are you able for this level?” Gradually, he proved more than capable. This week Jimmy Lee heralded his place in the pantheon of the Treaty’s greatest players. It was only natural that he would eventually lead his county.

In 2016, Corbett was appointed co-captain. That continued until January of this year. A press release confirmed Cillian Fahy would take over. It proved a welcome relief.

“Suddenly, younger fellas aren’t talking to you as the captain any more. You are just one of the lads. You can come training, park it and go home. There is a lot of unseen work in the captaincy. Cillian is brilliant at it actually. This year I could just focus on myself.” 

His style of leadership was captaincy without theatre. A tad cold off the field, heart stitched across his sleeve on it. That was something he had to mould and modify throughout his career, right up to this campaign. Limerick enjoyed a remarkable 2025, winning Division 4 and reaching the Tailteann Cup final. He was at the heart of it, but in a different way.

“It is a balancing act. Brain is more important than heart on the field. Dealing with Micheál (Cahill) this year, for example, I love nothing more than jumping out of the line and getting a hit in. But if you try it 10 times, you might get two hits in and the opposition score eight points. Those two hits get a big roar but you go back for the video and you get a bit of a scalding.” 

More recently, the Limerick footballers have been at the heart of a controversy not of their own making. Their delegates’ decision to vote in favour of seeding the Munster SFC for 2026, despite management and players standing in opposition, prompted widespread anger.

Corbett took to social media in the aftermath of the vote to voice his own grievances, but he stresses the move is not the reason he walked away. That doesn’t mean he isn’t irked, though.

“I had my decision made already. Most of my team-mates knew throughout the year. That is not to say, as a supporter now it is extremely frustrating and disappointing that Limerick enabled it basically. You expect Cork and Kerry to vote for it. But we went against the, in brackets, weaker counties and didn’t support the other three and we should have because players and management wanted it.” 

At a recent county board meeting, the county secretary outlined why they voted in favour. As reported by the Limerick Leader, the funding will allow them to field an All-Limerick colleges team in the Corn Uí Mhuirí and look into appointing a full-time football coaching officer, something that was recommended in the Limerick Football Review Committee report six years ago.

“I’d be surprised if those promises were held,” says Corbett. “If the amalgamation happened in the next two years, I’d be surprised and very happy.” After a devastating injury, he made it back. He made it to Croke Park three times. They fell short against Kildare but he was still able to take Dylan out on the field afterwards for some carefree play.

Since announcing his retirement, he has found the reaction surreal. Messages from people he hasn’t met in almost ten years have arrived steadily. In his profession, Corbett moved from peacekeeping in Lebanon to the Garda Síochána to his current role as an operator in a local factory.

His time in the force, working nights, left him with a newfound appreciation for the members still balancing both, like Clare footballer Eoin Cleary and Tipperary hurler Ronan Maher. Cleary reached out with a quiet congratulations on a career well spent.

“It has been an obsession for the last 14 years. Once the club campaign finishes and you aren’t back pre-season it will be strange, I will still be down in Rathkeale or the Gaelic Grounds supporting the lads. I am lucky Newcastle West have good standards and are competing at a high level that desire for success is still in the club. It became a way of life really, it is hard to imagine life without football. It was in the back of my mind all the time and that won’t change for another few years anyway.

“I’ll play as long until I am asked to step away. Steven Kelly is my neighbour, I think he is 43 and he still plays intermediate. Mike Mc is famous in these parts, he is 39 and still playing senior football. You aren’t let walk away too easily around here.” 

Just the way he likes it.