Rejuvenated O’Connor still has plenty of goals to aim for
AWEEK which told the tale of two all-time Championship scorers. On Tuesday, Cillian O’Connor spoke of the buzz he still gets as a Mayo senior footballer. The pick of this afternoon’s Allianz Football League games sees Galway host Mayo at Pearse Stadium in Salthill where football’s top championship scorer will be in situ for his 14th season.
Given his record-breaking scoring achievements, it’s hard to think that he is still just 31. Especially when an Achilles injury ruined his 2021 season and a troublesome hamstring reduced his involvement with Mayo last year.
And yet when it comes to the alltime scoring list his 31 goals and 354 points across 65 games amounts to a combined tally of 447 – way ahead of Kerry’s Colm Cooper (352) and Dublin’s Dean Rock (331) who only just announced his retirement.
Then on Thursday, Kilkenny manager Derek Lyng confirmed that hurling’s championship top scorer TJ Reid is ready for an 18th season in the black and amber. Like O’Connor, he stands atop the all-time championship scorer list with 30-551 across 82 games, the only difference being he has a current rival. Cork’s Patrick Horgan is just 14 points behind and the baton has passed over and back at different points of recent seasons.
The difference between Reid and O’Connor, though, is age. The former turned
36 last November and the level of his performance remains so high that he is a current All-Star.
If there’s another significant difference between two players who have broken all sorts of records over the course of their careers, it’s in terms of All-Ireland honours. Reid is a seven-time All-Ireland winner; O’Connor is still one of the figureheads of his county’s Holy Grail obsession with the Sam Maguire Cup.
Sometimes, all good things can come to those who wait. Lionel Messi’s international career was a long-running saga of thwarted ambition until all the stars aligned in the 2022 World Cup, the Argentinian maestro then 35 years old. On that very same afternoon, Reid was working his magic for Ballyhale Shamrocks in an AllIreland club hurling semi-final as the Kilkenny side dumped out the holders Ballygunner.
When I put the Messi analogy to O’Connor, it draws a broad smile. ‘First time I’ve been in the same sentence as Messi so I’ll take that,’ he laughs before focusing on the season ahead. ‘I feel good, I feel injuryfree and that’s positive.
‘The flipside of having a few injuries over the years is that you get a whole year out. I feel that year I missed in 2021 is a year I have back. I didn’t have the slog of a full season that year, I didn’t have the banging and trouble on the joints.’
Mayo’s sorrowful mystery of AllIreland heartache has to have taken its toll, however. Star players like Keith Higgins and Lee Keegan have retired without that elusive medal and others like Kevin McLoughlin and Jason Doherty pulled the curtain down after last year’s disappointing second-half fade-out against Dublin in the AllIreland quarter-final.
But O’Connor’s enthusiasm for the cause doesn’t seem to have dimmed. ‘I love training, I love the game, I love the matches and I love the buzz in the squad and the plotting and scheming with my team-mates trying to figure stuff out and win matches. I’m feeling positive again about it all and as long as you’re getting asked to be there and asked to play it’s brilliant.
‘There’s loads of examples you see in hurling and football of guys playing deep into their 30s and if I can take a bit from them then that’s brilliant. I know in pro sports you see the levels they go to to look after themselves. Think about LeBron or Tom Brady… Obviously we don’t have millions to be dropping on the training plans like those guys so there is a reality to it too in an amateur sport.
‘I think it comes back to enjoying it. If the environment is enjoyable and you’re in a good mood going to training and games there’s no reason why you shouldn’t keep going.’
The prospect of facing Galway too is sure to add spice to the mix this afternoon. Go back to 2018 and both O’Connor brothers – Cillian and Diarmuid – were sent off in a feisty league affair at the same venue that culminated in a minor melee involving roughly half the players on the field.
Local bragging rights and the priorities attached to playing in Division 1 will make this competitive. But all of that still doesn’t mask the other question of whether it’s worth Mayo’s time, in particular, to try and win the competition.
The two sides met in the league final last year and Mayo’s triumph was undermined by crashing out of the Connacht championship the following Sunday.
With the condensed intercounty calendar leaving little room for recovery, O’Connor’s teammate Ryan O’Donoghue suggested one solution: ‘Maybe don’t get to a League final.’
Now he was only half-joking given last year’s experience.
O’Connor though, says the idea of pulling punches doesn’t fit with his competitive make-up.
‘To my knowledge we’re going to be approaching every Allianz League game to win. You hear different bits and pieces about pacing your run and stuff. As a player that’s certainly not on my radar,’ he said.
‘You want to make sure Tuesday, Thursday you’re playing well, then at the weekend, if you get a jersey, there’s no such thing as taking the foot off the gas. We’re competitive animals at the best of times, I’ve seen lads falling out with each other playing 25 in the team hotel the night before. So nobody wants to give an inch.’
Another season then when chasing records, and that Celtic Cross, will fuel the fire.