We went to buy bag of cans in flip flops & socks during training camp & ended up in nightclub til 3am, Shels ace reveals

SHELBOURNE hero Greg Costello has lifted the lid on a boozy pre-season training camp which ended up with him going clubbing in his shorts and flip flops.

The full-back with the Midas touch for goals in FAI Cup finals told how he and teammate Liam Kelly were supposed to go into town and stock up on cans for teammates, including Pat Fenlon, who were stuck back in their University of Limerick dorm.

4 Shelbourne hero Greg Costello has lifted the lid on a boozy pre-season training camp Credit: INPHO/Norman McCloskey

4 The incident ended up with him going clubbing in his shorts and flip flops Credit: Ray McManus/Sportsfile

But it didn’t go according to plan.

Caretaker boss Mick Neville, who was taking pre-season in 1998 following the departure of Damien Richardson, allowed his players a few drinks one night as a break from the rigours of training.

Costello, 54, told The Irish Sun’s This Is Your LOIfe ­podcast: “He said we could get a couple of drinks, take them back to where we were staying.

“It was myself, Liam, Floodser (Brian Flood), Nutsy (Fenlon) and Declan Geoghegan.

Listen to This is your LOIfe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts every Thursday

“Anyway, whatever we were allowed to have, whatever the allocation was, that went pretty quick.

“So we said we’d sneak out, me and Kells, and replenish the stocks. So we went out, came back. They lasted no time. So we got to about 12 o’clock.

“So Kells says, ‘Right, we’ll make one more run’, downtown into Limerick city.

“There was a couple of bouncers. So we went up to them and said, ‘Lads, any chance of getting a takeout?’ So the lad said, ‘Well, you can come in if you want’.

“So me and Liam looked at each other, bearing in mind we’re in training gear. I had a pair of shorts on, flip flops, white socks. So we said, ‘Sure, listen, we’ll go in and have a look’.

“Half three we left. We were laughing, the lads were probably gasping back in the dorm cursing us, wondering where we were.”

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For Kelly, the next day was torture training with a hangover, but the injured Costello got to sit it out.

He explained: “So the boys were all training, including Liam, who wasn’t in the best of shape. He was in bits, in fairness to him.

“I actually stitched them up, accidentally I stitched them up.

“He thinks I did this on purpose, but at the end of the training session, after they’d done quite a bit, they were out on the track, and they were doing some laps of an actual track.

“They were going at a fair old clip, and I was standing there watching and I says, ‘Last lap, Liam, I want you to put on this spurt’ — a Forrest Gump job.

“Out in front of everybody, last little bit in the system. He goes flat out, gets round to the finish line, pulls up and Mick Neville says, ‘What are you doing? There’s another lap to go!’”

Costello won the lot during his spell at Tolka Park, including a league title and three FAI Cups.

He previously had a five-year stint at QPR in England, where he went as a trainee, and a brief spell at Swindon Town.

'WRITING ON THE WALL'

He was let go from Swindon by Argentinian World Cup winner Ossie Ardiles — a man he had convinced to sign him in the first place.

Ardiles had a short playing spell at QPR before getting the Swindon manager’s job.

Costello said: “He was down there just before my contract was actually up at QPR. The writing was kind of on the wall. At that stage I rang Ossie and said, ‘I’m going to be leaving here, do you think I could come and play down there?’.”

He added: “In some ways you feel like your tail is between your legs when you’re making the call, but at the same time I thought he would receive the call. And the worst he could say is, ‘I’ve loads of bodies here at the moment’.

LISTEN TO OUR BRAND NEW THIS IS YOUR LOIFE PODCAST THE League of Ireland is on a roll - but it hasn’t always been this way. The domestic game has so often veered from crisis to catastrophe over the course of its imperfect history. Yet it survived, and flourished. In this series, veteran Irish Sun chief sports writer Neil O’Riordan will take you back in time to when pitches were awful, terraces empty, and tackles over the top. He will meet the legends of the domestic game to discuss the moments which defined them, made their careers - and the legend of the league. The gloves are off, and nothing is off limits. Listen to This is your LOIfe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts every Thursday.

“He was grand. He was up until the point where he said I had to leave — he was a really good lad!”

Greg scored in two FAI Cup finals, in 1993 and 1995.

Remarkably, he managed to play in five finals in six years — giving his new wife a false impression of how football worked.

He explained: “I think for Orla, my wife, 1995 was probably the first final that we were together for and then we played four in a row. It was ’95, ’96, ’97, ’98.

FALSE IMPRESSION

“She said to me one day she just thought that’s what happened. When you got to the end of the season you played in the cup final.”

Shels was run for so long by the legendary Ollie Byrne, a character who lived for his club and someone everyone had stories about.

For Costello, one stuck out.

He told Neil O’Riordan on the ­podcast: “He’d f***ing blow up over nothing. You probably saw it loads of times. We were going to Australia one time (in 1992).

“So me and Liam looked at each other, bearing in mind we’re in training gear. I had a pair of shorts on, flip flops, white socks. So we said, ‘Sure, listen, we’ll go in and have a look’." Greg Costello

“We were all on the sauce going over. He was trying to get everybody into a line to queue up for the flight. We were changing terminals in Heathrow and he was trying to get everybody in a line to queue up for the next flight. Everyone was just ignoring him. Everyone was having a few drinks.

“You can just hear him in the background, just getting f***ing louder and more frustrated.

“So in the middle of the f***ing thing, in the middle of the terminal, he pipes up, ‘Now, I’ve had enough. I need everyone to queue up in chronological order’.

“Everyone’s like, ‘F*** off! What’s chronologically?’ You can imagine.”

Someone always seems to be losing the plot in football, and another episode involving gaffer Damien Richardson sticks out.

'HE'D BLOW UP'

Costello said: “Damien can be volatile at times. He’d blow up.

“There was a tray of sandwiches in the dressing room and one of those silver platters and he came in, the jacket came off, the tie was loosened. That was the way things would start off when he was going to blow up.

“Anyway, as part of the rant he lashed out, he booted out the tray of sandwiches, went up in the air the little triangles, and one obviously opened up and butter side down.

“It stuck to his George Webbs, or whatever he was wearing.

“I could see Floodser looking over at me trying not to laugh. I could see Deco Geoghegan looking over. It was just so hard to keep serious. He’d lost the plot.

“But all you could look at was the triangle of bread on his shoe.”

Listen to This is your LOIfe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts every Thursday.

4 Caretaker boss Mick Neville had allowed his players a few drinks one night as a break Credit: David Maher / SPORTSFILE

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