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28th May 2020
01:42pm BST

The punch-lines are always golden.
We're meeting him to talk IT Carlow's Sigerson journey but this guitar playing, basketball loving, All-Star winning free spirit could talk profit and loss accounts and make them funny.
"Did you ever hear of Paddy Sinnott the commentator?"Tell you a good one now. So one day, a wasp flew into Paddy's commentary box.
'John Taylor has the ball,' says Paddy, 'He's on the seventy, he's on the sixty,' he says. There's a wasp in the commentary box! I haven't time to kill it. Taylor's on the fifty, he shoots. A great point from Taylor!"Or another time," says Pat. "He was commentating on our National League game against Offaly. We led by two points in injury time and he began to get emotional in triumph.
'It's a brilliant performance from Laois against the champions...Taylor, Critchley, the Bohans and the Cuddys. A wonderful display...F*CK, it's a goal!""Oh yes," says Pat, "IT Carlow."
He doesn't just tell you once about the wild trips to America with his band, the memories of travelling to Barbados with the Irish wolfhounds, or indeed the madness of commuting from Glasgow to play with Meath - he has the patience and tolerance to do it twice - after you were silly enough not to press record first time around.
A true measure of the gentleman.
"I'm off the fags now," he says, pointing up the vape that keeps him going with a wink.
It ain't just tea in Crossmaglen though. Margaret tells you proudly about the club's Friday night tradition in Championship season, when the squad are united by mugs of tea and her famous cream buns.
"It's going nearly twenty years," she says. "We'd nearly be afraid of stopping it now.
You needn't ask him a second question, just stay quiet as the man catches breath. Hurling, Wexford and further afield, holds a place to the forefront of his heart and each story he tells is a thing of marvel.
"Look it, Kate Middleton has got more coaching in hurling than some of the young lads in Ireland have got."To the promised land he went in hurling and in business, but the Rosslare man has no airs or graces. Just hurling and the rest.
"Look," shout the 11-year-olds in harmony. "We said in the changing rooms that Sean doesn't give frees... "So just shut up!"
The lads know.
"I like to have a joke around with it too you know," says the man himself.
So if you complain to McGuigan about one of his decisions, you'd better be ready for the backlash.
"Look, the way you're playing, it won't be long before you're refereeing too you know!"Suddenly you realise how a small rural place like Slaughtneil are so successful. Because of people like Sean McGuigan, club chairman this long time.
"You have to be half crazy to do it, but I'm happy to be half crazy!"
"I'd say in the long-run I'm going to start up an aul landscaping business in a few years time," said the Clare-man in early 2019, with a smile on his face."The books were never really a strong point for me. I never really cared too much. I loved going out labouring. I loved being told to go away and 'do that' and I'd say if I started up my own company... I'd have no problem in asking someone other lads to do it!" Most modern day inter-county players are well schooled in the art of the pensive interview, but Clare's Clooney-Quin All-Star Peter Duggan is a different breed.
True to his word, he headed for Australia at the beginning of 2020 in hot pursuit of the landscaping dream. This global pandemic may have slowed him down but it won't wear him out.
"When you go into a job and you see a lawn that has weeds and moss everywhere and then when you leave you see a job accomplished. It's the same way as if you go into a game and you end up coming out winning, it's just a nice feeling."
We often reminisce about the characters of the good old days, well Duggan is a gem of the here and now.
"I obviously needed a bit of spray at the time and I remember the master Ned Kennedy came in and asked me did I want to go off.
"I went off anyway expecting to be going back on a few minutes later...And I never got back on.
"That wasn't going to happen to me again."Explore more on these topics: