GAA player on the Croatia bench
June 12, 2014
Barry Hamilton Geraldines
A member of the Wee County's Leinster U21 FC final team in 2012, Hamilton starred on the Geraldines side that stormed to the Louth intermediate football double last year. He works for STATSports, a local business set up by Sean O'Connor and Alan Clarke in 2008, and that work has seen him become an integral part of the Croats' World Cup bid:
"I suppose it was a case of being in the right place at the right time," Hamilton told The Dundalk Democrat. "The Croats were looking to get a demonstration of our STATSports Viper tracking system before the World Cup so Sean and Alan decided that I should go to their ten-day training base in Zagreb and Austria. I flew out on May 20th.
"The players and the manager, Niko Kovac, really liked the system and I got on well with everybody but I was due to come home on June 1st. I never expected to be going to the World Cup at all.
"The players held a meeting and the captain, Darijo Srna, stood up and told me to give him my passport as I was going to Brazil with the squad.
"The players liked the system and the technology so much that they were adamant they wanted to bring it to the World Cup. The next morning I was on a plane to Lisbon with the team, heading for the tournament.
"There are not too many people in my position, working a dream job that has taken them to the World Cup. I'm really looking forward to it and I really appreciate where I am.
"It will be an experience I'm sure I'll never forget and hopefully some of the people back home will be cheering Croatia on. Nobody expects anything other than a Brazil win but the lads are confident they can cause an upset." Tweet
