The door stopped revolving a while ago. Now it seems it is just one way traffic, the wrong way. Darragh Cotter becomes the latest departee when he starts his trek to Uganda on Saturday morning. His leaving is sudden in the sense that he only heard about his new job last Saturday, accepted Sunday and leaves tomorrow.
Last night he had exceptionally well attended going away drinks in The Hairy. Some crowd for a Thursday night. It is an especially big loss as he lays claim to two invaluable characteristics; he's from Cork and he is a dual player - although some may merge those into one, since it seems to be almost given that one comes with the other. Darragh being Darragh, he didn't go quietly. Instead he was the first Belgium G.A.A. man to deliver a 'speech' upon his departure. Embarrassing.
The timing is particularly bad because it is January and lads feel the blow from departures all the more. Just back after Christmas, morale can be low and to lose another buddy worsens the whole situation. Shane was on to me the other night clearly disappointing by the whole thing. He got little sympathy from me though. I used get down about it but you become very cold about comings and goings when you've been here as long as I am and seen so many departures. Its Brussels life, you just plough on.
Back to Darragh though. It wasn't all hunky dory (http://s2.jrnl.ie/media/2011/09/hunky-dorys-390x285.jpg) during his second tenure in Brussels. The man was the ultimate 'drill wrecker'. At the beginning of the year, I watched with great amusement as Eoin became more and more frustrated. They nearly came to blows one night when Darragh repeatedly hopped the ball in a drill when he wasn't supposed to!!
Then Eoin left and he became more a problem for me! My lack of patience isn't much of a secret at this stage and his airy fairyness nearly drove me around the bend. I can't put my finger on why he couldn't just do sh1t properly! The man was one of the most committed lads to training but he was like that child in school who didn't have any badness in him but just couldn't stop flipping talking! It was especially prevalent in group drills but not so much in one on ones. I got caught in a tackle box with him one day and can speak first hand at what a nightmare that could be.
Warm-ups were the other thing. He was brutal at them, always lagging behind, doing something slightly different to everyone else. I'd want to kill him when I'd see him fluffing around. As a countermeasure I thought we could get him to take some warm-ups from now on. He took one towards the end of last year before an in-house game. It went like clockwork which nearly made me more frustrated!
In a perverse way, when someone leaves it delivers a very positive message to the rest. Like those that went before, Darragh was slightly emotional about leaving and the club was one of the central players fuelling that. His few words last night confirmed that.
His Uganda gig is eight months. That brings him up to the start of our Championship. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in a Belgian jersey later in 2012.
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