Chance of Offaly comeback but Darragh Fitzgibbon feared his Cork season was over
eir Ambassador Darragh Fitzgibbon pictured in Croke Park marking eir's continued support of the GAA All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship and the fourth year of the Poc Tapa Challenge, a competition open to every GAA club in the country, where the fastest team wins 5,000 for their club and the chance to play in Croke Park on semi-final day. To enter, visit @eir.Ireland on Instagram. eir is recognised by Opensignal as having Ireland's No.1 5G network coverage. Photo by David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
Missing the rest of the championship was a consideration for Cork captain Darragh Fitzgibbon after his surgery for appendicitis last month.
The 29-year-old was set straight about the condition by Dr Adrian Murphy in Cork University Hospital’s emergency department having initially suffered stomach complaints last month.
Fitzgibbon had to sit out the Munster SHC final defeat to Limerick and was never likely to feature despite being named on the standby list for the game in the event any of the 26 players on the matchday panel were injured.
He is in line to be available for Sunday’s All-Ireland quarter-final against Offaly in Thurles. It will be five weeks on Saturday that he had the operation to remove the appendix at which time he was informed his season could be over.
“Like all those scenarios we went through, myself and Dr Adrian Murphy went through with the surgeon. But at the end of the day your health is your health and it had to come out, so I kind of had no decision to make and it all kind of happened in a little bit of a whirl.
“I thought I had a bug going to training and the next thing I was on the road to CUH to see if I needed to get my appendix out and then I had to two or three hours later.
“When you're explained about a serious enough situation like that, the hurling decisions go out the window and decisions had to be made to get rid of it.”
Schoolteacher Fitzgibbon had suffered stomach pain on Thursday, May 14 and sought medical advice at training two days later when he was admitted.
“Obviously, these things can get quite serious, so at the end of the day I was happy with the way things worked out and on the road to recovery now again, thank God.
“I was given a four- to six-week plan on a return to sport. But, to be fair, the operation was done incredibly well, and I was able to make a quick recovery.
“I was back, out and about, walking around the place three or four days later. And then I was back at (Ballyhea National) school after a week. We’d plenty of Sciath na Scol matches and stuff like that; I couldn’t miss them so I had to make sure I was back for them.
“Then just within training, the return to training was slow enough. Obviously, things were sore and things were tender, so just taking it session by session and week by week, really.”
The plan is to be ready for selection this weekend even though he has to be wary. “Obviously, I’m still in that five, six-week period. I’m obviously back doing more than I did previous to the Munster final, but we still have a week of training left.
“It’s only Monday yet, so we’ll have to see how Tuesday and Thursday go. I’ll try my best obviously to get back for it, but we’ll see how it goes after Thursday night.”
Fitzgibbon was named as a standby player more so to be around the panel as captain prior to the defeat to Limerick. He didn’t find it too difficult to watch the game last Sunday week.
“I probably consider myself a good spectator, to be honest. I’d be calm enough. Obviously, I’ve experienced what the lads were going through a couple of times… I wasn’t roaring or shouting or anything like that.
“Probably going back to pre-being a Cork player, going to the matches, just being a spectator as a kid, watching it with your dad or your grandad. It’s built the appetite definitely to come back. You only get a few years at it, so you want to try and make the most of it while you can.”
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