LAR CORBETT HAS confirmed that the ribs he fractured in last Sunday’s league final against Kilkenny were sustained during the off the ball incident with JJ Delaney.
The duo were both sent-off early in the second-half of that Nowlan Park clash with Corbett receiving a red card for the first time in his Tipperary career.
But the attacker insisted that he will leave it up to the Tipperary county board to decide whether an appeal will be launched against a potential suspension that would rule him out of the Munster championship clash with Limerick on June 9th.
And Corbett is distancing himself from any arguments that he was hard done by in the incident while rejecting claims that he gets singled out for rough treatment.
“I have a fractured rib maybe two. They are saying it is a six week job (to recover). It just happened during the confrontation. I actually didn’t know was it when I was on the ground and after when I got up the ribs were just sore.
“I don’t think it would be fair to say that (I get singled out), no. There are always going to be tough games. You don’t ever want a red card. It’s not nice and when you are living with it there is nothing you can do.
“Everyone is on about do I feel hard done by but all of that is out of my hands. It’s going to be up to the Tipperary County Board and whatever their decision is. My job is if I am picked is to perform and whatever happens off the field they look after that.”
Hurling supporters have expressed a wide range of opinions about Corbett in recent years yet the player insists that he is not frustrated by the fact that everyone has an opinion about him.
Corbett was the focus of criticism after Thurles Sarsfields All-Ireland club semi-final loss to Kilcormac-Killoughey in February due to his trip to the USA before the game with the GPA to help rebuild Breezy Point, a New York area devastated by Superstorm Sandy.
But Corbett, who was speaking yesterday at the announcement of Liberty Insurance as the new sponsor for the GAA hurling and camogie championships, has defended the timing of that trip.
“You have to remember, I was back the week before. People thought I was in America, jumped off the plane in a parachute and landed inside in Portloaise. I was back a full week on the Sunday, so you could have been to Australia and back. If we’d won the match there is no problem.
“If that’s how they are working out how we lost, there is no point in getting into that argument. You are not going to win that one anyway.”
Plenty rumours have emerged about Corbett of late but he joked yesterday that he would have liked if the talk of him scooping up the Lotto jackpot at the end of January had been true.
“That would’ve been great,” he laughed. “Of all of them, that’s the one I wanted to be true. I double checked it.”
Tipperary’s Lar Corbett, Antrim’s Neil McManus, President of the GAA Liam O’Neill, CEO of Liberty Insurance Pat O’Brien, Galway’s David Collins and Liam Rushe of Dublin
Pic: INPHO/Lorraine O’Sullivan
