Early last month, Alan Nestor came off the bench in the Meath Division 2 League Final for his club Blackhall Gaels.
While his team won, he was also savouring a triumph of another kind.
The reason why stems from a diagnosis he had received months earlier for testicular cancer.
"For me it was like the icing on the cake," he told us in the Off The Ball studio tonight, reminiscing about that final appearance.
Just two weeks before that decider he had completed chemotherapy treatment.
"It was about five minutes to go and it was the first time ever that I was really scared to come on. Looking back now I shouldn't have togged out because I was so badly out of shape. At that stage, I'd put on about two stone just purely from the steroids and the medication I was on and also from the terrible diet," he explained.
Although the official diagnosis came in August 2014, Nestor originally found a lump in October of the previous year.
"That's why I want to raise the awareness. It's just because of my idiocy and lackadaisical attitude, it cost me six, seven, eight months of my life where I was sitting at home on my own, going through needless pain."
Nestor detailed his recovery process and the things that helped him deal with the diagnosis.
