BROGAN ANGUISH
IF THIS is it then the GAA world is united in the belief that Bernard Brogan’s career deserved a better ending. The news yesterday that the 33-year-old sustained a cruciate knee ligament injury last week has led to inevitable fears that Gaelic football may have seen the last of the five-time All-Ireland winner.
That might be a tad premature given that there was no official confirmation from Dublin on the extent of the injury.
A worst possible case scenario is a rupture which would sideline him for a minimum of nine months; best case would be a partial tear which the medical team may even seek to manage without going down the surgical route.
Either way Brogan’s season is shrouded in doubt this week and given his age and waning influence, so is his future.
In a way, the frequency of cruciate injuries in the modern game may have, to a degree, diluted the horror of the injury, but for those who have to endure the rehab it gets no easier.
As it stands, Jim Gavin is already waiting on another one of his former footballers of the year, Jack McCaffrey, to return later this season from the dreaded injury, but at 24 time is at least on the wing-back’s side.
This April, Brogan will celebrate his 34th birthday and he needs no reminding that time is the one thing that he does not have.
And he did not even need a crocked knee to be made aware of that grim truth.
Since he was dropped for the 2016 All-Ireland final replay, he has not started a Championship match for Dublin, although he saw some game-time in five of their six Championship games last year.
His start against Kildare in the Allianz League opener last month was just his third in 16 months, while his last significant starting role offered little comfort when he drew a blank in last year’s League final defeat to Kerry.
In contrast, 12 months earlier he torched Kerry for four points in the spring decider and in the process all but ended the intercounty career of Marc Ó Sé.
That slide in form is hard to arrest when you hit the mid-30s and even harder if you are forced to take a season out before coming back.
‘It is a serious injury at any age because it takes the year to recover from the injury in terms of being physically fit to play and I firmly believe it takes another year after that to get back to the level that you were at,’ said Tyrone manager Mickey Harte yesterday, who admitted that he was ‘shocked’ at the news of Brogan’s misfortune.
‘Some people can do very well and be back to full form within a year and a half but by and large it takes that second year for a player to get their confidence back, to get game-speed up and to get all game know-how back into their DNA.
‘It is a serious injury, a horrible injury and I hate to hear it when people get it. I really feel for him at this stage of his career,’ added the Tyrone boss.
It is possible, of course, for the very best to come back.
Kilkenny legend Henry Shefflin is proof of that after sustaining two cruciate ligament injuries in 2007 and 2010 — the latter when he was 31 — before returning to become Hurler of the Year in 2012.
But it rarely works out that sweetly. Colm Cooper’s experience serves as a more cautionary tale and when he returned in 2015 after over a year out — he had also broken his kneecap in a horror injury — he was a shadow of the player who had gone before.
The problem for Brogan is that his decline has been evident prior to this injury and he no longer resembles the potent force that stung for 21-197 in 58 Championship appearances.
And it is hard to believe, given the ferocious level of competition in Gavin’s squad, that he could return in 2019 and still have a shot at making a team — aged 35 going into the Championship — in which the competition is so fierce.
The likes of Paul Mannion, Dean Rock, Con O’Callaghan, Kevin McManamon, Cormac Costello and Paddy Andrews already mean that there is no shortage of inside forward talent, and such is the Dublin production line that others are likely to come fast and hard.
That makes it hard for Brogan to come back from here, but it should not be forgotten that his track record will show that he was a rare talent and a leader when Dublin’s need was greatest.
Still, from here it will be his greatest trick if he gets to do it all over again.