CONOR Glass has appealed for anyone who saw the incident that led to him being sent-off in last weekend’s Hogan Cup final to come forward.
Glass wants to clear his name after he was shown a game-changing first red card of his school career. The dismissal – for an alleged strike - ruined what was shaping up to be a fitting finale for Glass in his last game for St Patrick’s, Maghera before he joins AFL giants Hawthorn this summer.
St Pat’s were in control in the second half at Croke Park against St Brendan's College, Killarney when Glass went to break-up an altercation between a team-mate and a player from the Kerry school.
Afterwards the Derry minor midfielder exchanged a routine shoulder with ‘Sem’ star David Clifford but he was getting on with the game when referee David Gough gave him his marching order after advice from one of his umpires.
“He said in his report it was for ‘striking with my hand’,” said Glass.
“But what really happened was Shea Downey and his man were in a tussle and I went over and told Shea to calm down and I gave David Clifford a shoulder, we shouldered each other.
“It was something you see in every Gaelic game and the umpire sent me off for striking. I don’t know how they saw it.”
Glass has worked hard on maintaining composure during games and the red card was an ignominious way to conclude chapter one of his career.
He begins the next – with Melbourne’s Hawthorn - this summer but hopes to return home in the future and “hopefully win an All-Ireland with Derry”.
Before that he has ‘A’ levels in Maths, PE, Construction and IT coming up and admits he is struggling to focus and is determined to have the red card rescinded.
“It’s been a horrible last couple of days to be honest,” he said.
“Especially going back to school and seeing everyone and people talking about it. It’s horrible. It’s coming up to exam time and I can’t focus at all – it’s completely put me off everything.
“We’re appealing the case because I want to clear my name badly. I know I wasn’t in the wrong.
“We’ve been looking for evidence over the last couple of days. We’ve been to TG4 and they said they have nothing. We’ve looked at it (the recording of the game) and there’s no coverage of it at all.
“We’re going to Croke Park to see if they have anything – surely they’ll have cameras about and they’ll be able to get the incident.
“We want to put it out that if anyone does have it, let us know and show it.
“Maybe someone got it on their phone, or a picture or some witnesses… Just own up to it and back me.
“We’ve tried speaking to David Clifford and we’re going to speak to his father about it over the next couple of days.”
St Pat’s led 2-5 to 0-7 with 45 minutes gone when Glass was dismissed. The towering midfielder, a three-time MacRory Cup winner and a Hogan Cup medallist in 2013 (as a fourth year student), is such a key figure in the side that it wasn’t surprising that St Brendan’s began to dominate after his red card.
“We were in the driving seat – we were four points up and they couldn’t get out of their own half,” said Glass.
“I had dropped back to give a bit of coverage in defence and then, once the red card happened, it put everyone off their game.
“Shea Downey was marking David Clifford and he told me that after I got sent off he couldn’t focus at all. Clifford went in to full-forward and scored 2-3 in the last couple of minutes. It’s heartbreaking, it’s heartbreaking…”
It’s obviously not the way the Ulster Minor Football Championship winner envisaged signing off in Gaelic Football. But he might well be back. He answers: “I hope not” when asked if the Hogan final was the end for him.
“I’m just going to take my AFL career day by day and see how it goes,” he said.
“It could last a day, it could last 10 weeks, it could last 10 years.
“It depends on how it pans out for me but hopefully at the end of my career I can look back and be pleased with it and go home and hopefully win an All-Ireland with Derry.”
The legions of Oak Leaf county fans that will lament Glass’s loss will be delighted to hear that. But for now the Watty Graham’s clubman is determined to pour his heart and soul into Aussie Rules – he has to if he is going to make a success of it.
“Dermot McNicholl (former St Kilda player) is one of the teachers at St Pat’s and he has given me a couple of tips,” he said.
“I had stuff in the back of my mind about coming home and he told me ‘just forget about it, you need to go full-throttle at it and put your heart into it’. That’s how you make it in the AFL.
Glass will stay with a host family in Melbourne and intends to enrol at university next year. He expects homesickness early on and he expects to have to work hard to break into a ‘Hawks’ side that has won the last three AFL titles.
“It’ll be very hard,” he said.
“Hawthorn are the best team in it. Going to a good team like Hawthorn is something young boys wouldn’t really want to do but they’ve been good to me.
“My targets are to play consistent AFL football in the second division – that’s where most of the young boys play - and go from there. We’ll see how it goes.”
