Conor Glass has criticised the GAA after one of this year's most infamous GAA controversies when it emerged that Crokes had an extra player on the pitch in the dying moments of their All-Ireland Club Final win against Derry side Glen.
Glen initially lodged an appeal of the result but ultimately withdrew it when the process grew tedious and messy. However, Derry star and one of the Glen's key players Conor Glass has revealed that he thinks Kilmacud Crokes' win was 'tarnished' by the debacle.
Speaking at the launch of the FRS Recruitment GAA World Games in Croke Park Glass revealed that he, his teammates and the wider club all wanted the game to be replayed but the GAA let everyone down.
I wanted the replay. When I was on the bus on the way home, I wanted the replay, 100%, and the rest of the team was like that. The management was like that, the whole club was like that but the more it dragged on, the more it started to fade off. A week or two into it...like, Emmett Bradley was getting married three weeks later, boys had holidays planned so the longer it went on, the less emotional I was about it and I was happy enough to just move on. But 10 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours after the game, I wanted a replay.
Everyone was let down by it. That GAA didn't handle it very well at all.
Conor Glass has been one of Derry's top players since returning to the inter-county squad after the controversy, however, he's been nursing a hamstring injury for the last few weeks. While he's expected to play this weekend's semi-final against Monaghan, the Glen man came off injured early in Derry's loss to Dublin in the League final. Glass's departure all but condemned a struggling Derry side that day.
Speaking about returning to the Derry squad too quickly after the game, Conor Glass said he'd only gone back to forget about the controversy. Revealing that the result is now tarnished either way, but regardless of that, Glen would've taken the replay.
That's why I went back into the Derry set up, it was to forget about it and move on
Well, it's tarnished now...There's an asterisk over it either way. If we had won it (a replay), we would have accepted it, but it would have been tarnished, there would have been an asterisk there either way. There's an asterisk over it now and there would have been an asterisk over it had we won.
Conor Glass and Derry take on Monaghan in the Ulster SFC semi-final this Saturday as they set about retaining their current status as Ulster champions.
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