You've probably heard about the farce that was the Crossmaglen and Dromintee Armagh Senior Football Championship quarter-final on Friday night. Due to the fixture clashing with a wedding in the community and the county board being unwilling to reschedule, Dromintee fielded a mostly veteran side, some of whom were wearing jeans, in order to avoid a ban.
Crossmaglen manager Oisin McConville was on Second Captains yesterday and told us a little more about the debacle.
The ball's thrown in. I'm standing on the sideline and there's a fella in a pair of jeans. At that stage we had 20 minutes to get our heads around that. We weren't quite sure what way the game was going to develop.
A fella took a call on the side who was marking Aaron Kernan. I could hear his phone ringing. He takes his phone out of his pocket. He answers it and the conversation went, I'll tell you it word for word.
'Yeah, is that two pallets? I should be able to get that to you tomorrow. That'll do. Listen, I'm at a match here.'
And then he put down his phone.
That definitely tops the lad I played with who carried a packet of cigarettes in his sock.
Crossmaglen kicked 1-8 and then decided to use the remainder of the game to train in one corner of the pitch while Dromintee knocked the ball around at the other end.
We just decided to train. We took the boys down to the corner and we ran lengths of the field. They just kicked the ball around with each other. Unfortunately at one stage the ball went out of play in the far corner from where we were training. Aaron Kernan had to run the full length of the field to kick it back into them, so that they could pass it around. At that stage I shouted onto the field if they could just fist the ball rather than kick it. We're trying to get on with a training session.
Forward to around 31:30 to hear the story in full.
Picture credit: Stephen McCarthy / SPORTSFILE
