Extract # 2 from 'Unlimited Heartbreak' Henry' Martin's excellent book on Limerick hurling through the years. The last remaining copies of 'Unlimited Heartbreak' can be purchased online for €15.95 at http://www.collinspress.ie. Personally signed copies can be purchased directly from the author by sending a paypal for €20 incl P&P to hjmartin@eircom.net

Damien Quigley, who would finish the year as an All-Star, was slow to grasp the inter-county opportunity: 

John Kiely was on the Limerick panel and I was living with him in Cork at the time. He was going up and down to Limerick the wholetime for training and I was laughing at him. I thought he was f***ing mad, up and down training all the time with both Limerick and UCC and he loved it. I was captain of UCC and training so much with the college that I couldn’t even get my head around it. When the Limerick selectors asked me, I didn’t even join them straight away, I told them I would wait until the Fitzgibbon Cup was over. We were training so hard for that, combining it would have been madness anyway. I don’t know how Kiely managed to combine them, he was mad anyway, but he loved it in fairness, loved going up and down. I couldn’t have done what he did anyway. I really couldn’t.

 Quigley admits that he did not see himself as an inter-county contender: 

I remember playing challenge games against Cork for UCC, being marked by lads that were nowhere near the Cork senior team, and getting nothing off them. I remember thinking if I can’t get anything off those, there’s no way I would ever make it as an inter-county hurler. There was no rocket science to it. Because of that I was very relaxed about the whole inter-county scene and I just didn’t think I was good enough anyway. 

In 1994 UCC defeated Brian Corcoran’s Cork RTC in the Fitzgibbon Cupfollowing a replay, a victory that Quigley believes won him his call up: 

Cork RTC had a serious team. Actually I don’t think we would have beaten them had they been wearing any other jersey, but for tradition sake alone, UCC couldn’t be seen to be beaten by Cork RTC. Funny enough, the drawn game was on a Wednesday before a huge crowd at the Mardyke and I didn’t puck a ball. The replay was on the following Saturday four days later and we scored 2-6; I banged in 2-2 of it. I started on Corcoran and he was moved off me. I’d say the Limerick selectors were at that game. If they had been to the Wednesday game it would have been a different matter. It wasn’t that they were watching me in particular; it’s just that they would have gone to the matches anyway to see all the Limerick players. If you can play Fitzgibbon you have a fighting chance of playing inter-county. 

Quigley’s inter-county career was nearly over before it began: 

I never even started a National League match; all I played was ten minutes of the final game in Waterford. We played a few challenge matches with Limerick prior to the championship and in the last challenge game against Laois I very nearly didn’t make it onto the pitch. As was the done thing for students at the time, I thumbed up from Cork to Limerick on Sunday evening. The match was in Doon at7 p.m. and I was still in Charleville at 5.10 p.m. I was due to be picked up at my house in Limerick at 5.45 p.m. There were no mobile phones in those days. I was f***ed. There was the career gone before I started.That’s the truth. Would you believe the father of one of the lads who I played with from Na Piarsaigh coincidentally happened to pass me on the road and picked me up in Charleville. I said, ‘Jesus, Pat, am I lucky to see you,’ told him the story, he put down the boot, barely made it in the door of my house at 5.45 p.m., got the gear in a bag,and gone out the road then to Doon.

Looking back now, the Charleville thing was a bit of a laugh. I mean, it wasn’t as if I didn’t allow enough time or was flippant about it. I always thumbed; you would always get a lift with the hurley in your hand. Times were different then, loads of people thumbed, it was the way to travel. Inter-county hurling is really all about small margins,tiny stuff. I actually hurt my ankle in that Laois match, and Tom said to get it right for the Cork game on 31 May. I gave an exhibition in that match, I didn’t score very heavily but I was winning ball in the corner, it was one of those days where things happen, and I was very relaxed about it. In an earlier game against Offaly I scored a goal. Pat Heffernan put it on a plate for me. That ball barely scraped in under the crossbar, and it looked great but it could have hit the crossbar. In another challenge game, I scored a goal against Galway, and my marker’s hand was there with mine, and he could have caught it just as easily. At that level it really is that close all the time.