A member of the panel of the Kerry football team which lost to Meath in the 2001 semi-final later assaulted a young woman in her house in Killarney causing her harm, the Circuit Court in Tralee heard yesterday.
Mr Declan Quill (21), Ashgrove, Ballyvalley, Tralee, is contesting the charge of assault on Ms Orlaith Cussen, Friary Downes, Killarney, on September 3rd, 2001.
On the opening day of the trial, Ms Cussen (24), then a duty manager in the Killarney Park Hotel, told how she had met Mr Quill at the Crypt nightclub earlier that night. The pair got on "really well".
At closing time, Mr Quill seemed "pretty drunk". The two kissed and held hands. He walked her home.
He had no place to stay and asked if he could stay at her house. She agreed, as long as he slept on the couch. But when they got to the house she was renting with two others, the couch and the armchairs were taken up.
Ms Cussen agreed to let him sleep with her in her single bed as long as "there was no funny business. I am not that kind of girl," she told him. She awoke to find Mr Quill leaning over her tugging off her pyjama bottoms. She was shocked and asked him what he was doing.He yelled at her and her head banged off the headboard.
Mr Quill slapped her on the face and cursed her. When she managed to escape he threw her up against the hot press in the corridor and put his hand over her mouth.
Her face was bruised and swollen, there was blood coming from her teeth or her nose. The right hand side of her hip was bruised and sore. Her nails were broken.
Ms Marianne Ledwith, who was woken from her sleep on the couch directly downstairs, said she had heard banging.
The case continues.