We will be all the poorer if Con O’Callaghan doesn’t get to test out Tommy Walsh’s theory
IFELT my inner Mossie Quinn breaking out this week. In the aftermath of this year’s All-Ireland minor final, Mossie, looking at life through his sky-blue Dublin lenses, mischievously tweeted his hope that David Clifford would enjoy a long and successful career in the AFL.
If I had a full licence to drive a tweet machine, I would respond by expressing my hope that Bob O’Keeffe and Liam MacCarthy would get to share the same mantelpiece in Con O’Callaghan’s front room next year. That would not just be self-interest at play.
Football might be my game, but that does not mean that hurling does not stir me as a sport.
And as a defender, one of my favourite hurlers of all time was Tommy Walsh, whose attitude, aggression and touch made him one of the most complete players to have ever played the game.
Over the last 12 months he has had every bit as much impact off the field as a pundit as he had on it, and he makes for compelling listening.
When this week he told Newstalk’s Off the Ball that he believed that O’Callaghan is the best hurler in the country right now and likened him to his own boyhood hero DJ Carey, you really have to listen.
I may not know much about what makes a great hurler, but I have seen enough of O’Callaghan to see he is every bit the hurler that he is the footballer and that pretty much says it all.
In fact, as different as both codes are, he plays them pretty much both the same.
The goal he scored at the start of this year’s All-Ireland final and the one he scored in last month’s Leinster club hurling final, both came out of the same page of the playbook.
He knows only one way to play both codes, on the front foot and going for the jugular every time it presents itself.
That run through the heart of the Mayo defence and the nerveless finish was all the more remarkable because it came with effectively the first play of his career in an All-Ireland final.
His instinct as a forward is to attack the defence once he gets in possession, trusting his speed and skill to either carve open the opportunity to score or force the defender to commit a foul.
He is the kind of player that any back hates to mark.
Half the secret of defending is seeking to instil enough doubt into your opponent that instead of taking you on every time, he will check back and lay it off.
Yes, it is a team game but inside the selfish mind of every defender a little bit of you thinks: ‘job done, someone else’s problem now.’
That is not how O’Callaghan rolls and that’s what has made him an All-Star and young footballer of the year in his first season as a regular starter.
It is also why he is the most decorated player in the game this year; a triple All-Ireland and provincial winner with club and county. It is impossible not to marvel at that and wonder what more he can do.
I love seeing Kerry winning the All-Ireland but if that was not to happen in 2018 I would get a huge buzz out of seeing Con O’Callaghan trace Teddy McCarthy’s footsteps and win an All-Ireland double.
That is a long shot I know, but the Dublin hurlers are far stronger than their results over the past couple of years indicate and, with Pat Gilroy in charge, whatever potential is within that group will be squeezed dry. It is big leap but if Dublin could put their best hurlers on the field they can be a top four team, and after that... well, the ball is round. When I was a young buck, my admiration for Jimmy Barry Murphy knew no bounds. Yet by the late 1970s, when he was only coming into his peak, he ditched football because he could not sustain doing both, and, of course, because there was greater prospects of success with the Cork hurlers. Half a century later and the demands placed on inter-county players belong to a different universe and we are told the dual star is a thing of the past. I would have accepted that but O’Callaghan’s talent burns so brightly on both fronts it would be great to see him try. Anthony Cunningham, Dublin’s hurling coach, raised the prospect this week, suggesting O’Callaghan could keep hurling up to May. The roundrobin Leinster hurling championship begins in May this year so you can see where Cunningham is coming from. And such is the anaemic nature of Leinster football that Jim Gavin would hardly have to lean on O’Callaghan to get over either Offaly or Wicklow. There is a window of opportunity there, just don’t expect Gavin to open it. The chances are that it won’t happen but if O’Callaghan fails to get the opportunity to put Walsh’s theory to the test, we will all be the poorer for it.