He is in line to be available for Sunday\u2019s All-Ireland quarter-final against Offaly in Thurles. It will be five weeks on Saturday that he had the operation to remove the appendix at which time he was informed his season could be over.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike all those scenarios we went through, myself and Dr Adrian Murphy went through with the surgeon. But at the end of the day your health is your health and it had to come out, so I kind of had no decision to make and it all kind of happened in a little bit of a whirl.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought I had a bug going to training and the next thing I was on the road to CUH to see if I needed to get my appendix out and then I had to two or three hours later.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you’re explained about a serious enough situation like that, the hurling decisions go out the window and decisions had to be made to get rid of it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Schoolteacher Fitzgibbon had suffered stomach pain on Thursday, May 14 and sought medical advice at training two days later when he was admitted.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, these things can get quite serious, so at the end of the day I was happy with the way things worked out and on the road to recovery now again, thank God.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was given a four- to six-week plan on a return to sport. But, to be fair, the operation was done incredibly well, and I was able to make a quick recovery.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was back, out and about, walking around the place three or four days later. And then I was back at (Ballyhea National) school after a week. We\u2019d plenty of Sciath na Scol matches and stuff like that; I couldn\u2019t miss them so I had to make sure I was back for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen just within training, the return to training was slow enough. Obviously, things were sore and things were tender, so just taking it session by session and week by week, really.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The plan is to be ready for selection this weekend even though he has to be wary. \u201cObviously, I\u2019m still in that five, six-week period. I\u2019m obviously back doing more than I did previous to the Munster final, but we still have a week of training left.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s only Monday yet, so we\u2019ll have to see how Tuesday and Thursday go. I\u2019ll try my best obviously to get back for it, but we\u2019ll see how it goes after Thursday night.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"eir](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/5120091_11_articleinline_3427730-copy.jpg\" "\\"eir")
eir Ambassador Darragh Fitzgibbon pictured in Croke Park. Photo by David Fitzgerald\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n
Fitzgibbon was named as a standby player more so to be around the panel as captain prior to the defeat to Limerick. He didn\u2019t find it too difficult to watch the game last Sunday week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI probably consider myself a good spectator, to be honest. I\u2019d be calm enough. Obviously, I\u2019ve experienced what the lads were going through a couple of times\u2026 I wasn\u2019t roaring or shouting or anything like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably going back to pre-being a Cork player, going to the matches, just being a spectator as a kid, watching it with your dad or your grandad. It\u2019s built the appetite definitely to come back. You only get a few years at it, so you want to try and make the most of it while you can.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n Eir ambassador Darragh Fitzgibbon was marking\u202feir\u2019s continued support of the GAA All Ireland Senior Hurling Championship and the fourth year of the Poc Tapa Challenge, a competition open to every GAA club in the country, where the fastest team wins \u20ac5,000 for their club and the chance to play in Croke Park on semi final day. To enter, visit @eir.Ireland on Instagram. eir is recognised by Opensignal as having Ireland\u2019s No.1 5G network coverage.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Missing the rest of the championship was a consideration for Cork captain Darragh Fitzgibbon after his surgery for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1965,1128,61,60,850,112],"class_list":["post-502350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-hurling","tag-football","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}