Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
FROWN UNDER
Hands ace Mckenna wants to put a smile back on his face after unhappy time in Aussie Rules
THE pull from home was always strong for Conor Mckenna but, this year, he felt he couldn’t resist it any longer.
And while he explains that his club, Essendon, were irritated by his regular comments in media interviews about how he didn’t particularly enjoy living in Australia or playing in the AFL, it’s a measure of how highly they rated him that they still tried everything they possibly could to keep him.
Last year they allowed him to go home for his brother’s wedding and he was given a three-week break in Ireland at the start of this year in a bid to offset his latest bout of homesickness.
“I never enjoyed going back, no matter what, Christmas, after the off-season, I just never wanted to go back really,” he revealed. “It normally took me two or three weeks to sort of get back into the swing of things and be happy but this year, I never really got to that stage and probably two months in, I still wasn’t happy.”
Essendon even allowed him to train with Wolfe Tones, the local Gaelic football team that his brother played with, at the expense of training with the club.
He pinpoints two moments in particular from his six-year exile when playing Australian rules felt far too much at odds with not playing Gaelic football.
One was missing out on Tyrone’s AllIreland under-21 victory in 2015, the other was sitting out their last senior final appearance, in 2018 against Dublin.
He said: “I was sitting there and it sort of hit home that I could probably be playing there. It probably proved to me that I’m not where I want to be.
“I was probably over in Australia for the money aspect of it rather than playing the game.”
He came home last month and though his training time was limited, he’s readjusted to Gaelic football with the minimum of fuss, standing out in both their League games against
Donegal – who they play again in Sunday ’s Ulster quarter-final – and Mayo, hitting the net against both.
Mickey Harte (inset) will be asking different questions of him though.
Mc K e n n a a d m i tt e d :
“When I was coming back people were saying to me,
‘ Your fitness will be far better than Gaelic players and you will be at a different level’. But I came home and
I got a bit of a shock at how much Gaelic constantly moves, there’s no stoppages.
“In the AFL we might do a run and the ball would go out of play and then there’s
30 or 40 seconds of walking but in Gaelic it is non-stop.
“It is definitely something
I struggled with when I came back training, how much the ball constantly moves and you have to be on the jog.”