Aaron Kernan's marker took phone call during match

September 23, 2014

"Will have them for ya tomorrow".

Oisin McConville has recounted how one of Dromintee's players took a phone call during Friday night's ridiculous Armagh SFC quarter-final.

Crossmaglen's opponents at the Athletic Grounds - whose first team were unavailable due to a wedding - fielded a makeshift side made up of over 40s to avoid being thrown out of other competitions and co-manager McConville's story, told on Second Captains last night, captures the ludicrous nature of proceedings:

"I'll give you the official word on it: the official word on it was that we were down to play a championship match in the Athletic Grounds on Friday night at 8 o'clock, so we go through our normal routine, we meet at half-five and go to do our warm-up, we arrive at the pitch, we're back out onto the pitch as early as we can, 25-to-eight, getting a bit of a warm-up done, trying to build up the intensity...

"At twenty-to-eight, Dromintee arrive onto the pitch - not the Dromintee that we were expecting because it was an over-40s team, some boys wearing jeans...

"If I can fast-forward on to the throwing-in of the ball, they told us before the game that they wouldn't be challenging for any balls and that their senior team had let them down, as a club, that they were attending a wedding and they had informed the club that they wouldn't be there so the club took action and decided that they would turn up with a team because otherwise they would have got suspended for six months to a year.

"These were the fathers of a lot of juvenile players who didn't want their sons missing out on football for the following twelve months.

"Fast forward on to the game, the ball is thrown in, I'm standing on the sideline and there's a fella in a pair of jeans ... sort of at that stage we'd had twenty minutes to get our heads around that. We weren't quite sure what way the game was going to develop but a fella took a call on the side, who's marking Aaron Kernan...

"I could hear his phone ringing. He takes his phone out of his pocket, he answers it, and the conversation went on and I'll tell you word for word, was 'ah, yeah, is that two pallets? yeah, I should be able to get that to you tomorrow. Eh, that'll do. Listen, I'm just at a match here', and he put down his phone."


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