ARMAGH returnee Ross McQuillan has revealed he quit Essendon Bombers after just one season because he never quite fell in love with the game of Aussie Rules football.
The talented Cullyhanna native was ready to return to the Melbourne club before Christmas but after some soul-searching and a chat with his father, Martin, he decided continuing with his AFL career wasn’t for him.
The 21-year-old said he loved the lifestyle out in Australia and paid tribute to the people of the Essendon club, but the game didn’t hold the same appeal as Gaelic football.
The versatile McQuillan will rejoin the Armagh senior football panel after discussions with manager Kieran McGeeney.
“I didn’t want to offend people at the Essendon club but I didn’t have the same love for the game,” said McQuillan.
Ross McQuillan back on home soil and ready for Armagh challenge
“You have to love the game that you’re playing and, for me, it just wasn’t there.”
Homesickness didn’t play a role in his decision either.
“I loved Australia, absolutely loved it, I loved living in Melbourne, loved the craic, my team-mates, the weather. I was living the dream but come Saturday whenever we were ready to play the game, it just wasn’t the same for me.
“I never got the same buzz. I’d rather be going out to play for Cullyhanna in a challenge game.
“I couldn’t explain it. I couldn’t get the Grá for the game. I thought the game itself was a bit drawn out, it was a bit stop-start, a lot of long kicking and not really looking for a man, stuff like that...
“Now, I could have got over that, to be brutally honest. It was just a case of I’d much rather would have been home representing Cullyhanna and representing Armagh and trying to build stuff here instead of being out there.”
McQuillan became great friends with former Essendon team-mate and Tyrone’s Conor McKenna in Australia with both men now back on home soil, while Meath footballer Cian McBride has returned to the AFL club for the upcoming season.
Jamie Clarke, Callum Comiskey and Joe McElroy can’t commit to Armagh in 2021 but these losses have been offset by the return of McQuillan and Killeavy ace Ciaron O’Hanlon who also returned from Australia after working there for a couple of years.
McQuillan’s last Championship appearance for Armagh was as a second-half substitute in their epic 2018 encounter with Roscommon in Portlaoise. He remained involved in 2019 but his game-time was sporadic before he accepted a trial and a subsequent two-year contract offer at Essendon towards the end of that same year.
The AFL rookie didn’t make any first team appearances for the Bombers and when the second tier Victorian Football League was pulled because of Covid, squad players ended up playing ‘scratch’ games that didn’t help McQuillan’s development.
But he doesn’t blame a lack of opportunity or the pandemic for not returning to Australia; he simply missed playing Gaelic football.
“A few people have said it to me: ‘If you had gone over in a normal year it might have been different…’ but I don’t think it would have been different to be honest.”
"They had a flight sorted for me around December 20 and I needed to confirm it. A couple of days before it, I thought: ‘Why am I going back?’
“I started to think about it. I started talking to my dad and he just said: ‘Whatever makes you happy.’ And I just felt I wanted to be home trying to win stuff with Cullyhanna and Armagh. I said to my dad one day: ‘I think I’m done. Can you find me a job?’
“When I said that, it felt like a weight off my shoulders. It was definitely the right decision. Homesickness wasn’t really a problem for me out there. Maybe one or two incidents, around my birthday and stuff like that. I think that’s natural.”
