Jack McCaffrey has opened up on his high-profile departure from the Dublin senior football squad, admitting that "the fun had gone out of the whole thing".

In an expansive interview with former team-mate Bernard Brogan on his Off The Ball podcast, the 27-year-old spoke at length about his decision to walk away from inter-county football during the lockdown and how last year's drawn All-Ireland SFC final "broke" him.

"Something just wasn’t right and it probably wasn’t right since halfway through the summer last year when I just felt the fun had gone out of the whole thing really," five-time All-Ireland SFC winner McCaffrey said.

"I wasn’t looking forward to training. I’ve spoken in interviews before about the love I had for the group and that was always true but it just kind of suddenly wasn’t really any more just because of changes in my life as opposed to anywhere else.

"I think what broke me was the drawn final [2019 All-Ireland]. You just build everything to this game and it went quite well on a personal level. Obviously we didn’t win, we didn’t lose thank God, but I was walking up to the ref, I thought there was extra-time and David Moran just stuck his hand out to shake my hand and I was just like, ‘We don’t have to do this again, do we?'"

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