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Last year’s Irish draw final “broke” Jack McCaffrey and led him to leave the Dublin panel.
The 27-year-old walked away from intercountry football with the Sky Blues earlier this year after playing a key role on the team that claimed five in a row.
McCaffrey played for Dublin in a 1-16 to 1-16 draw with Kerry last September and helped them win 1-18 to 0-15 on replay, making soccer history in the process.
But the flying forward has now opened up about the moment his heart sank after the tied game.
He told Off The Ball’s Bernard Brogan podcast: “I think if Dessie (Farrell) hadn’t gotten involved, I probably would have walked away sooner.
“Dessie has been an incredible influence on my football career since I was 12 and once she took over the job I was right, surely I can give her a year, give her a good chance, and it wouldn’t be great to finish what we started. so long ago.
“But something just wasn’t right and probably wasn’t right since the middle of summer last year, when I felt like the fun was gone.
“I didn’t really want to go to training and had spoken in interviews before about the love I had for the group and stuff, and that was always true, but suddenly it wasn’t anymore, just because of changes in my life compared to any other place.
“And then I think what broke me was the final draw. You just built everything for this game and it was pretty good on a personal level, and obviously we didn’t win and we didn’t lose thank God.
“But I remember shaking David Moran’s hand, I was walking towards the referee, I thought there was overtime and David Moran just reached out to shake my hand and I said, ‘We don’t have to do this again, do we?’
McCaffrey was working as a junior physician at Temple Street Children’s Hospital during the Dublin bid for five in a row.
And the club man Clontarf revealed that he missed training in preparation for replay as he tried to balance his professional life with the intense demands of inter-county football.
“I had amazing colleagues on Temple Street who really covered my butt on numerous occasions,” he explained.
“I was in a clinic on a Thursday afternoon the following week (after the Irish final draw) and if I had told someone that I had trained there would have been no problem. I was there to learn more than anything else. at that time and if I had said I had training at 7, they would have said, ‘done’.
“But I kept my mouth shut and stayed there until 8 o’clock and missed training.
“And I was like, I can’t go there. I just showed up and told Jim (Gavin) that they caught me in a clinic, that I didn’t train and that I arrived the following week and luckily everything went well.
“But I was so exhausted from it and then I never really got it back.”
McCaffrey made the decision to quit after a league game against Tyrone in February, when he fell asleep during a pre-game chat after a series of night shifts at St Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny.
But he is reluctant to say that he has definitively retired and does not rule out returning to football at some point.
McCaffrey said: “I arrived at halftime, hurt my hamstring, got on the bus, called a friend in New York, booked a flight to New York the next day, left the country, decided to quit soccer, and came back. .
“I don’t want to say I’m retiring. Gaelic football is a hobby, it’s something I love, and no one would be happier than me if I woke up tomorrow and said I have a bit of enthusiasm, I want to play for Dublin again. there right now, that doesn’t mean it won’t be there again. “
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