Larry Tompkins has revealed how he owes his career to Gerry McEntee - who became one of his great adversaries.
Years before he emerged as a star for Cork, Tompkins suffered a hairline fracture of the skull when playing for his club Eadestown in the Kildare intermediate county final in 1983 and subsequently fell into a coma.
The outlook was bleak at the time though he returned to play for Kildare nine months later.
Speaking to The Long Hall podcast, Tompkins recalled: “I just got done off the ball, an elbow into the side of the head.
“You didn’t have the medics in any club that time to say, ‘This guy needs to come off the field’. I just hopped up off the ground.
“The match was videod, believe it or not, and it was only a number of weeks afterwards, just seeing it, sure nobody thought there was anything wrong.
“It was five minutes before half-time and I played the whole game.
“No memory of it. I scored 1-10 and I don’t even remember it.”
He collapsed in the shower after the game and was rushed to hospital.
“I just came to after two days or three days and that ruled me out of football for quite a while.
“A lot of people probably thought I’d never play again.
“At the time, you don’t realise that it was a dangerous situation. It took me a bit of time to get back into it and another Meath man was a massive help to me that time, Gerry McEntee.
“Gerry was the head fella in the Mater Hospital and with the guidance of Gerry and his expertise and the people he sent me to, he guided me through the process. I got back into it then and I played again probably nine months later.”
“You see Rory Best wearing a kind of a scrum cap, and Gerry McEntee was saying to me that if you want to play sport again that might be a way to go but thank God the injury healed up quite well and I got back.
“I didn’t wear any scrum cap, I avoided that but massive thanks goes to Gerry McEntee. He was always a great mate and a great friend and it’s amazing that we had our tussles then.”
Tompkins also spoke warmly of his footballing hero, Offaly’s Matt Connor, whose career was ended as a result of a car crash in 1984.
“I just admired him as a massive footballer, a guy that I always looked up to
“Maybe a lot of people would forget him but I try to keep his name there because he’s a guy that you would just look at and admire. He was a brilliantly balanced footballer.
“He had all the skills of the game, he could kick with right and left, he was a massive free-taker. Someone you would pay money any day to watch.”
