Former PSNI constable Peadar Heffron with former GAA player Joe Brolly

AN All-Ireland winning footballer has demanded a GAA club apologise to a former player left in a wheelchair following a dissident republican car bomb.

Former Derry star and GAA pundit Joe Brolly said Creggan Kickhams GAC in Randalstown should say sorry to Peadar Heffron.

He asked the club "where is your courage, where is your honour"?

Mr Heffron, a Catholic police officer, suffered devastating injuries in January 2010 when a booby trap device detonated under his vehicle.

His right leg was amputated and lower body injuries mean he uses both a urostomy and colostomy bags as part of his daily routine.

He was a hurler and Gaelic footballer with Kickhams Creggan GAC in Randalstown, and helped the club to the Antrim Intermediate Championship title on two occasions.

Read more: Peadar Heffron tells how he was 'shunned' by GAA when he joined PSNI

Speaking for the first time since the attack in an interview with the Sunday Independent he told Mr Brolly how his club turned their back on him as he announced plans to join the newly-formed PSNI in 2002.

He also claimed that in the wake of the attack, which saw him spend 10 months in hospital, they never offered an olive branch.

The club last night said it was not making a comment at this time.

Now, writing in his Gaelic Life column, Mr Brolly was critical of the club's response to Mr Heffron's revelations.

"Creggan's answer to the shocking indictment against them has been `no comment'," Mr Brolly wrote.

"It is a fine club and has done great work over the last 20 years but their is something rotten at the core that they need to address now.

"When two committee members went to visit Peadar's devastated father and mother when their son was in a coma, was it really necessary for them to say `we are not here to represent the club, we are only here in a personal capacity?'. You know who you are. Where is your courage? Where is your honour?"

Mr Brolly added that "an apology would be a start".

"Perhaps the club could establish a scholarship in Peadar's name. There ought to be some recognition of their terrible disloyalty and cruelty to a decent human being," he said.

"A club delegation should ask to go meet him, to apologise and listen. They could absorb his terrible hurt. Or they could take the coward's way out and stick with `no comment'."

Meanwhile, Sinn Féin's national chairman Declan Kearney, has responded to DUP calls for him to condemn the treatment of Mr Heffron by Creggan Kickhams.

Mr Kearney, who is a relative of Mr Heffron and has links to the club, said he shared his sympathy and support with Mr Heffron and his family at the time.

"Sinn Féin unequivocally condemned the attack on Peadar in 2010. That was my position then and now," he said.

"No one should be marginalised due to membership of the PSNI.

"Many members of my own, and wider family, including myself, have been associated with Kickhams GAC for decades. Kickhams GAC is a proud club which makes a huge contribution to the community and civic life of south Antrim. I find it regrettable that some have cynically chosen to create a new controversy with this tragedy," he said.