Why Dubs still need Diarmuid Connolly
History beckons for Dublin and while they proved they can thrive without Diarmuid Connolly, there may yet be a day when inspiration is required
DIARMUID CONNOLLY felt like a vital part of the discussion around Dublin’s four-in-arow tilt last summer. With the new season imminent and Dublin about to start a campaign that will be soundtracked by talk of a drive for five, Connolly no longer seems so important.
Dublin showed in 2018 they can win without perhaps the most talented player of his era.
All they have to do is do it again.
Where this leaves Connolly is altogether more uncertain.
He is still just 31 years of age, and once fit, there is no player like him in the Dublin squad. As a fusion of physical power and technical ability, only Michael Murphy rivals him.
But Dublin adapted following his absence from the team from March last year.
Five years ago, Connolly, Paul Flynn and Bernard Brogan were the most important attackers in Jim Gavin’s side.
Now, none are starters and Ciarán Kilkenny, Con O’Callaghan and Paul Mannion lead the best forward line in the game.
After a summer spent in the relative harmlessness of club football in North America, Connolly returned to Ireland in the autumn.
He came on at half time as St Vincent’s were hammered by St Jude’s in a Dublin Championship semi-final last October. The defending champions eventually lost by nine points.
He had made his return in the quarter-finals but could not inspire his side when he came on against Jude’s, held scoreless through a punishing half of football for the title holders.
Dublin’s preparations for an unprecedented fifth All-Ireland in a row are in train, and they will be conducted with characteristic stealth.
They open their league commitments away to Monaghan a fortnight on Sunday, but were Connolly to feature it would come as an enormous surprise.
He has not played a game for his county since their league game against Mayo last March, and this followed a dislocated 2017.
That summer was marred by Connolly’s three-month ban for ‘minor interference’ with a linesman after he put his hands on the sideline official in Dublin’s Championship win against Carlow.
Broadcast coverage of Connolly’s conduct that day prompted an extraordinary response from Gavin, who memorably resorted to constitutional support in defending his player.
‘Freedom of expression and opinion is an important part of our constitution in the Republic but it’s not absolute,’ said Gavin as part of an attack on the analysis of Connolly’s misbehaviour by RTE and Sky Sports.
It was the latest disciplinary conflagration into which Connolly had stumbled, but his year was not done. He came on in the All-Ireland final against Mayo at half time and was brilliant, kicking a late point and then winning the free that Dean Rock converted to take the game. But within six months, he was gone. The reasons for Connolly’s absence have not been revealed, but gossip and rumour offered plenty of possibilities. After Dublin beat Galway in Croke Park at the start of last April, Gavin indicated that Connolly would be back for the summer. ‘He has had a long number of years playing senior inter-county football, as have a lot of this group, so that decision was made in his best interests,’ said the manager, who was asked if Connolly would return for the championship. ‘Please God,’ he replied. At the launch of the Leinster championship the following month, Gavin confirmed that Connolly was not a part of Dublin’s summer planning. In doing so, he also noted the importance of respecting a player’s entitlement to not only privacy, but choice. ‘I just hope we’ve a duty of care within the Association, for anyone who volunteers their time. It is an amateur sport, be it managers we have here today, that you respect them, and from a player perspective as well, and I hope people understand that.’
Connolly’s status as one of the best footballers in the country fuelled interest in this story, and so did his often controversial experiences in the Dublin colours.
But the team survived without him – helped to a very significant degree by the fact that no county seriously jeopardised them in a knock-out match all season.
The sternest test they had was in Omagh in the Super 8s, when they found a way to win.
But there was no epic final against Mayo, or no taut semifinal challenge from Kerry that required Connolly’s instinctive brilliance.
Now there are very significant doubts about a challenge of that nature, like Kerry 2016 or Mayo 2017, rising to confront Dublin this summer; both of those rivals are regenerating.
Donegal and Galway are unproven in the later stages of the Championship, and the Tyrone model has been exposed twice in two seasons by the champions.
‘The media at home should protect his genius,’ posted the manager of the team he played with in Boston following Connolly’s departure from America in the autumn.
This rather ignored Connolly’s extensive record of indiscipline on the field, and he has been involved in controversy off it, too.
But Gavin knows that Connolly, at his best, can re-set the tempo of a big game.
The memory lingers on his performance in the last bad day this remarkable Dublin group experienced in the Championship.
Connolly was the one player who maintained his first-half standard in the second half against Donegal in 2014.
He had been outstanding in the first 20 minutes. For a time it seemed he and Paul Flynn would dismantle Donegal’s famed defensive structure on their own through searing points from long range.
The overwhelming question, of course, is whether, after almost a year out of the inter-county game and with more than a decade of
It’s not just his call, Jim Gavin will make the final decision
high-level football in his bones, he can reach his best again.
‘We have the highest regard for Diarmuid, and we back him 110 per cent,’ said Declan D’Arcy in the aftermath of Dublin’s fourth All-Ireland in a row last year.
‘There are no issues from our end towards Diarmuid,’ D’Arcy, Gavin’s long-serving selector, said then.
‘Again, it’s an amateur sport. There are not having to do things; it’s all about choices.
‘He decided this year that he needed to take a little bit of time away, and he should have been allowed that, and we allowed him to do that.’
His team-mates have sounded enthusiastic about the possibility of a return. ‘Yeah of course, he’s a fantastic player, we all know that, and the door is certainly open for him to come back,’ said Paul Mannion last September.
‘He’s a great friend of ours, we all think hugely of him and would love to have him back. But that’s his decision, if he’d like to come back.’
It’s not just, or even mostly, his. Gavin will make the final call.
And even though it seems Dublin don’t need him, wait until some breathless August or September day, when the noise is dying in Croke Park and Dublin need an inspiration.
Connolly has answered that need before.
Jim Gavin must judge whether he might be required again.