BACK IN EARLY May, the Tipperary footballers schedule was cleared for a weekend.
Post league and pre championship, there was a lull with a round of club hurling games penciled in.
Tipperary forward Michael Quinlivan looked elsewhere for his sporting fix and noticed that Leicester City’s title winning party was fixed for the King Power Stadium.
He checked flights, roped in teammate and housemate Alan Campbell, and jumped on Claudio Ranieri’s bandwagon.
“We went training on the Tuesday night and I was on the way home in the car,” says Quinlivan.
“I was bit bored at home, it was around exam time, (so I) just looked up flights. They were very cheap, over and back on the one day from Dublin to East Midlands.
“We were complete bandwagon jumpers! Myself and Alan went, and another friend who’s living in London, Andy Pyke. We met a couple of other lads going over from Dublin.”
The best sports story of 2016 caught their imagination.
“It was some trip. I’ve never seen anything like it. There was people on the streets from ten o’clock on the day.
“We tried to sneak into the stadium now but it was to no avail. We just went around the town, the whole atmosphere was incredible.
“I’m a Liverpool fan and the only thing that would probably be better than it for me now would be seeing Liverpool win a Premier League. When I looked it up, I was trying to think of reasons why I shouldn’t go and I couldn’t come up with anything.
“I’ll look back on it and never regret going. If I had my time back, I think I’d have stayed for the second day.”
He was hoping for another soccer trip abroad in June to catch Ireland and Sweden in Euro 2016 – the day after Tipperary’s landmark win over Cork – but the demands of accountancy exams prevented him.
“I was a small bit caught with exams the following week. I was still contemplating it the week before but it would have been the guilt at not studying would have got to me. I gave it a miss.
“Alan and Philip (Austin) went over alright, they caught the Sweden game. Talking to the two boys, they’d an unbelievable time.”
Soccer always consumed part of Quinlivan’s sporting interests. His father Martin stood between the posts for Waterford United in a spell between 1987 and 1993, when they yo-yoed between life in the Premier and First Division.
“I was extremely young at the time,” recalls Quinlivan. “It was the time of Alfie Hale, when they went up and down in six seasons. Then he played a couple of years with Tipperary as well.
“Soccer would have been into me from a young age. It’s always good growing up when your Dad’s a keeper because you’re never put in the goal.
“I was always the one taking the shots rather than saving them. I don’t think goal was ever for me, I prefer playing outfield.
“A lot of that minor team from 2011, grew up playing soccer together with Clonmel Town. We’d a very close group going the whole way up.
“I played against Robbie Brady and Jeff Hendrick actually, in the Kennedy Cup in 2005 with South Tipperary. The two Leahy’s (Shane and Donagh) were both on that team as well. There’s a bit of a crossover between GAA and soccer there.”
He’s taken a step back from soccer these days and seismic wins like Tipperary’s Munster semi-final in June, justify the sporting road the 23 year-old is travelling. It was the first time in 72 years that they had defeated Cork. They toasted the victory that night in Clonmel and it was a result to savour for the tight-knit Tipperary football community.
“That (record) doesn’t really weigh on the current group but for a lot of people in Tipperary, and a lot of people around the country, they kind of stood up and took notice.
“We’d had the consistency over the last number of years, reaching the last 12, the last 16, we still hadn’t taken the scalp that make people recognise you as a proper force on the football front. I think the Cork game did that.
“We’re a tight family with the Tipperary group in fairness. We know our supporters on a first name basis. It was great to have everyone there in Clonmel that night. A lot of the management were there as well, which is important.
“You’re back at training then, everyone is raring to go and you have a couple of hard sessions to run out the night in Clonmel.”
Those type of wins help sustain the relentless demands of inter county football. Quinlivan is based with PWC on the North Wall Quay in Dublin, there’s a bunch of inter county players who are work colleagues in Cian O’Sullivan, Seamus O’Shea, Ciaran Lyng, Liam Rushe and Niall Murray.
As the crow flies it’s a two hour one-way trek from work to training in Thurles and traffic adds further time to that commute. The travelling can take its toll.
“It is a big ask going from Dublin, it does take its toll. Myself, Alan (Campbell), Donal Lynch, that’d be the three based in Dublin for the whole year.
“Then you’d have the boys who were in UCD, Jimmy Feehan, Colm O’Shaughnessy, during college time. Mully (Brian Mulvihill) is gone now, which is a huge personality gone. He used to break up my evening going down with him!
“I drive normally, the lads get the train and then they come back up with me. There’s a few of us thank God. I think if you were on your own, I don’t think it’d be doable at all. You’d probably crack up. It’s the nature of the game if you’re in a county that doesn’t have a city.
“But every other county has the same kind of problem. If you’re not Cork, Galway or Dublin, you’re going to struggle. That’s just part of it. But you do it for things like the Munster final a few weeks ago.”
That afternoon was Quinlivan’s first time sampling a Munster senior football final atmosphere. He had played in Fitzgerald Stadium before, scoring 1-1 in the 2011 Munster minor final when Tipperary used that victory as a springboard to land an All-Ireland title that September.
The 2016 outing in Killarney was not as memorable. Tipperary stayed in Tralee the night before the game with Quinlivan struck down with illness.
“I didn’t have the greatest preparation, I barely slept the night before. But obviously with it being a Munster final, it wasn’t going to keep me out of it even though I wasn’t at 100%.
“At the same time, I didn’t play well and I don’t think that was all down to the sickness. Once you go out onto the field, the adrenaline takes over.”
The Kerry game was a sobering experience. Quinlivan looks back and concedes that Eamonn Fitzmaurice had his team operating a higher pitch but reflects wistfully on Tipperary’s failure to be clinical in front of goal.
The following week he watched from the couch on a drenched day of hurling in Limerick as Tipperary blitzed Waterford with five goals, his current Clonmel Commercials club mate and former Tipperary football team mate Seamus Kennedy bedding into the half-back line.
“I was absolutely over the moon for him,” says Quinlivan.
“I thought he was excellent last Sunday. He’s been rock solid there for the three games he’s played.
“I think Tipperary in general in the hurling have a different steel in them this year. There’s a prize there for an All-Ireland if they can grasp it.”
The Tipperary football squad have their own ambitions. In 2012 and 2014 they hit a brick wall at the last 12 stage. Breaking through the last eight barrier is the goal in Kingspan Breffni Park today against Derry.
“It’s a massive drive and more so the feeling of hurt that we didn’t perform to our level down in Killarney.
“That’ll obviously drive us as well. It’s a great opportunity. It’s definitely the next step for our group.”
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