HE CON GET EVEN BETTER

CON O’CALLAGHAN laughs when asked if he’ll ever have a better year than 2017, but then many a true word is spoken in jest.

“Hopefully, I can do the same next year,” he smiles. “Yeah, I hope so.”

All-ireland senior titles with his club and county in hurling and football respectively. Another All-ireland with the Dublin under-21 footballers. Leinster titles with all three of those teams. A county hurling title with Cuala. An All-star. Young Footballer of the Year.

The only Championship game he lost out of the 22 he played this year was when Cuala senior footballers were eliminated by St Jude’s at the quarter-final stage in Dublin.

“We lost in the club football, so that’s something we could improve on,” he says.

He didn’t feature for Dublin in this year’s Allianz Football League given Cuala’s run in the spring and with the allconquering Dalkey outfit well on the way to emulating that feat, he may well have to wait until summer before lining out for Jim Gavin again.

He’s out of the under-21 grade in 2018 though UCD will hope to snare him for their Sigerson and Fitzgibbon Cup sides, which he had to sidestep earlier this year.

For now, at least, O’callaghan can take a break with Cuala’s All-ireland club hurling semi-final against Liam Mellows not rolling around until February.

“I hope we have a couple of weeks off, yeah. We’re going off with the footballers on holidays in a couple of weeks so we’ll get a bit of a break.

“When you keep winning you’re fine, the body doesn’t feel it too much.”

Cuala manager Mattie Kenny recognised that all he needed to do to draw the best out of O’callaghan once his football commitments were parked was to sharpen his touch. The rest would follow.

He explains: “Obviously I don’t like speaking about individual players too much but Con is an exceptional sports guy, an exceptional hurler and an exceptional footballer. He’s after having an exceptional year. He’s a very, very grounded young lad.

“From a hurling point of view we only have to work on the skills of the game with him. It’s the training, training, training really that can get to you. We’re duty bound to keep him fresh.”

Can he get better?

“As a player, if you think you’ve arrived then you’re dead in the water, aren’t you? Con, I’m sure, every day he goes out, every day he gets up, he’s going to see what he can do to improve himself.

“The guy is only 21. He’s got six, seven or eight years at his peak in front of him

“He’s going to be gaining experience, coming up against different situations, different markers, and he’ll be figuring out ways of how to work around that. So, can he improve? Yes, of course he can.” A sobering thought for defenders in either code for

2018.