RTE sports broadcaster Des Cahill broke down in tears on Monday night's episode of Claire Byrne Live.
The presenter was on the show to help raise funds for a GAA hero recovering from a traumatic brain injury who once played in Des' local club.
Sean Drummond, 27, was involved in an accident in 2019 which left him with a traumatic brain injury after he was knocked down after finishing his master’s degree in London.
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His mother Jenny told Claire : “He did an engineering degree. He finished that, he worked for a little while with a research group in UCD and then he got into a masters in Imperial in London and headed off in the end of August 2018 to start that masters and he had finished kind of the academic year in March.
“He finished his exams. He was going out celebrating that weekend with a group of people and he was coming home on the Tuesday and he was going to be playing for Cuala and he was involved in an accident and suffered a traumatic brain injury.”
Within his first 72 hours in hospital, Sean was on life support in the Acute Care Unit and had to undergo two emergency operations to remove large sections of his skull to reduce the pressure due to swelling on his brain.
For the next 2 months, Sean lay in bed in a coma, until in May, he finally underwent surgery to insert artificial plates into his skull.
After two and a half years in hospital in London Sean was finally able to return home however his recovery continues.
Speaking about Sean, Des broke down in tears as he recalled the bright and vibrant young man.
Recalling when Des found out the news about Sean, he said: "Anyone who is a parent, you dread the knock on the door."
Des looked back on his time with Sean before the accident: “Well Sean came through, I was involved in the senior team, and Sean came through with, they won the minor championship, a group of very talented young fellas came through together.
"So I watched them coming from being quiet, to being new in with the senior group, to then becoming the main group of the seniors when they’d be out having the craic and you know they’d never invite us over to sit with them or anything,” Des joked.
Recounting more stories of Sean Des added: “So he was academically very bright fella, very bright guy and so he was going over to do, it was to do with artificial intelligence, so I said oh what are you actually studying? He said well you wouldn't really understand and I said oh don't be so insulting what is it? So he told me and I didn’t understand.”
Des then explained what got him so emotional on the programme was the efforts Sean’s friends and the community had gone through to raise money to aid his recovery.
Fighting back tears the RTE presenter said the group has raised over €400,000 and now hope to reach their target of €600,000 to help Sean.
If you would like to donate to Support4Drummo and support Sean’s recovery, click here.
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