Michael Rice knows what it’s like to get to Croke Park with Kilkenny and not set foot on the pitch. On Saturday, he made the journey with his club, Carrickshock, stayed on the field and came home with a club All-Ireland medal after cruising to a 2-15 to 0-6 victory over Ahascragh.
“I wasn’t really expecting to be back here again”, Rice told KCLR’s Brendan Hennessy after the game.
“It’s brilliant. To come here with the club is something special, something so different.”
“It’s absolutely brilliant – you just don’t want to leave the place (Croke Park). If someone said you would be playing up here with your club when you were a young lad, it’s dream stuff. The big thing for us is you actually come up and do the job. You’d be always weary that everyone is kind of talking about how great it is to actually be here and you might forget about going and winning the thing.”
This a great place when you win – it’s a shocking place when you lose up here.”
With the All-Ireland series done and dusted, it’s time for Carrickshock to return to the senior grade in Kilkenny.
“We’ll take a few weeks off but we’ll have to re-focus quick enough. We’re in intermediate for a reason so we have to make a huge step up again and it’ll be a different story. It’s going to be a lot tougher than anything we’ve faced in the last twelve months.”
Watch our full interview with Michael Rice below.