Sad passing of Pat Quigley

Pat Quigley, who passed away at 7pm this evening, Sunday, December 31, was a football administrator who got to the top of the game nationally, and who was rightly respected the world over. He was a man of deep integrity.

I always found Pat to be decent to a fault, and completely genuine.
Pat became President of the FAI in 1996, a post he held for four years. He was Vice-President from 1994 to 1996 and served as Acting President for eighteen months before he took full control.
He started off in football as a ‘helper’ with the now-defunct Road Rangers FC (a Mayo Leauge junior club based around McHale Road, Castlebar) He progressed to Castlebar Celtic youths and became a member of the Mayo League Management Committee. Pat progressed to Mayo FA delegate to Connaught Football Association, and later a Connaught delegate to the FAI. In between he served as Chairperson of both the Mayo FA and Connaught FA. Pat became the first person from Connaught to
take the presidency of the FAI.
He was born in 1945 in Slough in the UK, to Irish parents. The family moved to Ballyheane in 1952. His greatest honour, he told me, was when Ballyheane FC asked him to officially open their pitch. Pat instantly agreed, such was his nature. What Pat didn’t know, was, that, on July 1 2001, when he pulled the chord to unveil the plaque on the clubhouse, it was his name on it. Pat Quigley Park.
“I was stunned,” he told me, eighteen months ago, when I sat in his living room with a pen, a pad and a voice-recorder. “I couldn’t believe it. I was lost for words – probably the only time ever in my life that I couldn’t say anything. No words would come out. It was a great honour – the greatest I have received. It was a complete shock. The club hadn’t told me in advance, only that I was opening the pitch."

They had told Eleanor (his late wife,) and she was sworn to secrecy which she observed – so much so that she didn’t even tell our children. It was a major shock but a fantastic occasion and a "tremendous honour.”
Despite health battles in recent years, Pat attended Mayo league matches and League of Ireland matches almost weekly. We chatted beforehand, and always saw the funny side of events, afterwards.
Pat lost the love of his life in April 2023, when his wife Eleanor, (nee Brady) passed. He is survived by their daughter Patricia and her partner Charlie, son Shane and his wife Jess, grandchildren Aaron, Joshua and Tara.
Funeral arrangements will be announced later.
RIP Pat – one of the good guys.