After a thirty-year long career on The Sunday Game, Pat Spillane will make his final appearance in the RTÉ punditry booth this weekend for the All-Ireland Football Final between Kerry and Galway.
Now as he prepares to step away from television punditry, the Kerry GAA icon has revealed that he was once punched by Donegal fans after a match outside Croke Park.
The incident happened in 2012 following Donegal's victory over Cork in the All-Ireland football semi-final, which Donegal won, on the Clonliffe Road, outside Croke Park.
"I once got punched by Donegal supporters on Clonliffe Road after a game," Spillane told this week's issue of the RTÉ Guide.
"That day I ran to my car and was driving a bit fast down Clonliffe Road when a Ban Garda stopped me. 'You are speeding sir!' she said and I told her that I had just been attacked by a group of supporters and that they could still be after me."
"So yes, there were time it was like running with the bulls in Pamplona."
Pat Spillane was extremely critical of Donegal's style of football under Jim McGuinness. In 2011 when Donegal lost a famously defensive All-Ireland semi-final to Dublin, Spillane was extremely critical of Donegal's 'shi'ite' style of play, describing the result as a "victory for Dublin and a victory for Gaelic football."
"Gaelic football as Donegal want to reduce it to would degenerate it into a shambles, a game which involved one team stopping the other team from playing and thankfully the one team that wanted to play football won the game."
Pat Spillane announced his intention to leave the programme before the All-Ireland Football Semi-Final between Galway and Derry.
"I'm out the gap, I'm riding off into the sunset." Pat Spillane confirms that after 30 years on the Sunday Game, this will be his last season in front of the camera. #RTEGAA pic.twitter.com/1I2Aof6AyB
— RTÉ GAA (@RTEgaa) July 9, 2022
The eight-time All-Ireland medal winner has since said that he was finding it "tough going" on the programme due to the long days and the scrutiny he faced.
“I was finding it tough going and not really enjoying it anymore. Jeez, I’m 67 on my next birthday and you’re arriving home from Dublin at 3 o’clock in the morning, thinking there must be easier ways," he told the RTÉ Guide.
Pat Spillane will be hoping to go out on a high if his beloved Kerry can claim the Sam Maguire on Sunday.
