Mossy Quinn played inter-county football for Dublin for almost a decade making his debut in 2003 under the management of Tommy Lyons. He would win an All-Ireland in 2011 before retiring the following year.
Quinn was always a reliable free taker. Even in his early years with the Dublin seniors, he was tasked with taking dead balls.
The St. Vincent's man, who is now Dublin GAA's commercial manager, was on Newstalk's Off The Ball on Saturday to talk about, among other topics, criticism which he received from the public during his inter-county career.
During the 2004 National League, after winning their opening game, Dublin traveled to Castlebar to play Mayo. They would lose - badly.
Quinn had one his less efficient shifts as dead ball specialist that day. He missed a penalty and multiple frees. On the evening following the game, he received a phone call from a Dublin fan. The motivation of the call was not to offer Quinn support following one of his poorer displays in the blue of Dublin.
I don't know if I've ever told anyone this before. One of my first years, I think it was 2004 - my first real year with Dublin was 2003 and it was a poor year under Tommy Lyons, I played pretty much the whole league and was in an out of the team for the Championship.
We started the league in 2004 and I think we beat Tyrone at home - it was 0-9 to 0-8. We went up to Castlebar the following week, the first week of February - I think they had cattle on the pitch beforehand. It was probably one of the worst Dublin performances and we were beaten 1-10 to 0-3. I think I scored two frees but I missed a penalty - it hit the crossbar - and I think I missed four or five frees.
I was at home on the Monday night watching telly and my phone rang. It was some fella, some punter giving me abuse. I answered the phone and said hello and someone says 'Oh you...' - I won't repeat what he said. I didn't hang up straight away because I thought, this can't be. It's not something one of my mates would do. I eventually hung up and thought, 'That was pretty random'.
I was sitting there, sort of shellshocked, on my own watching the television. I wasn't really sure how to take it or how to deal with it.
That was a once off, it never happened again.
You can listen to Mossy Quinn on Newstalk's Saturday panel.
Picture credit: Brendan Moran / SPORTSFILE
