Plenty of fight still left in veteran star McManus
Monaghan’s marquee forward relishing another shot at big guns
HE IS fast approaching his twilight, but Conor McManus’ gift is to see every season as a new beginning.
It is likely that his 12th intercounty season will begin in earnest today, when he is expected to be in from the start as Inniskeen invites Kerry’s stars into its formidable parlour.
He will hit the 30-mark this year and he is managing to play through a hip condition which bothers him more when he has to talk about it than when he has to play through it.
And he has hammered his head hard off the same glass ceiling so many times that at this stage, he might be forgiven for wondering why should he bother at all.
He has made it to five All-Ireland quarter-finals — starting in four — and yet never got a chance of even one shot at playing for a place in the final.
Not only that, but his latest bid was crushed with such depressing brutality that it served as a reminder that the very top prize is most likely now unattainable.
Monaghan huffed and puffed last August, giving every ounce of themselves once more, but when it was all over they had not laid a paw on Dublin as they slipped to a 10point defeat.
Scraping yourself back off the floor to go again can’t get any easier, but that’s not how he sees the game.
‘The reality is that you have to put it behind you and move on,’ he insists.
‘If you start drowning in your sorrows or even overthinking things, then what would the point be in coming back this year.
‘You put it behind you; you try and learn what you can from it to put it to your advantage and you go harder even the next time.’
Two games into the spring and, as ever, Monaghan have been true to their word.
It is early days but a win last time out against Kildare — a game in which he came off the bench to mark his return — already means that they have given themselves a fighting chance of staying in the Allianz League’s top tier for a fifth successive year.
That might not be a big deal to the likes of Dublin, Mayo or Kerry — the only three counties with a longer unbroken stint in the top division — but for Monaghan football this is ploughing new ground.
When Malachy O’Rourke inherited the team in 2013 they were in Division 3 but if their climb into the League’s top tier could be initially dismissed as momentum’s natural force, staying there suggests real substance.
More significantly, two Anglo Celts and four All-Ireland quarter-finals in the last five years is proof of their top eight status.
But in battling so hard to stay in the top eight, spring and summer, there is the danger that they are running hard just to stand still.
Last year, not only did Monaghan survive but at one stage on the final day when they led Dublin, they were heading into a League final clash with Donegal.
Not only did that not materialise, but by the time that summer came around the two Ulster rivals bombed in the Ulster Championship, with the suggestion that they had invested too much in the spring.
‘There is that argument but it is hard to make it stick. Donegal were flying last year and did not have a great summer and you could say the same about us, we had a decent League and not such a great Championship.
‘Whether that is down to going too hard at it in the League I really don’t know.
‘Where we’re are at now, we are trying to give some players gametime who might not have got much before and get them up to speed and see where they are at and hopefully bring that into the Championship.
‘That is what the League is about now and I think more teams are taking that approach than was the case previously.’
The need to develop players as much as nourish points has been accentuated by the reality that this year, should McManus and Monaghan make the last eight, they will get more than one shot at breaking through that glass ceiling.
But, yet, he insists that they can’t fool themselves into thinking that there might be some delayed benefit from playing within themselves in the spring.
They have fought so hard to get here and so long to stay here that they will not be giving it up on the cheap.
‘This is where Monaghan football wants to be and needs to be. When you are bringing new players into your squad there is no better place to be bringing them into than Division 1 football and if we can stay there that would be great for the development of those players.
‘I don’t think that you can go down the road at this time of the year thinking that the focus must be on getting into the Super 8s.
‘It is very hard to do that in the middle of the League when all you want to do is win games.
‘Everybody is the same, there is no one going out there trying to lose games intentionally by claiming their focus is somewhere else, everyone is going out to win and get points on the board.
‘It is difficult when you are going out with those goals to start thinking about the Championship this early, bar the one or two teams strong enough to have that luxury.’
They face one of those teams today. Kerry football has never been about survival, but they have become a good measuring stick for McManus. When he started out in 2007 making the first of his 44 Championship appearances, he was part of the squad that ran Kerry to a single point in that year’s All-Ireland quarter-final. Three years ago, he kicked six points in Tralee as Monaghan recorded their first win in 27 years over the aristocrats, a feat that they followed up last year with another victory in Killarney. He senses a Kerry rising again, but it won’t faze him. ‘The conveyor belt of talent that they have got coming through from those minor teams is unreal and you can see those boys are all getting their shots at it now. ‘Is it the start of something new? Yes. Are they as good as they were over the last eight, nine years? You have a lot of experience mixed in with some of these very good young players so the answer to that is probably yes as well. ‘But, look, this is you want to be playing in this League, this is the kind of challenge that the footballer in you should relish.’ And he will.
This is where the county wants to be, and needs to be