On The Ball post-game<\/a>, O\u2019Connor admitted the occasion was an emotional one that overwhelmed him throughout the clash.<\/p>\n\u201cWe did, finally! It\u2019s just extra special,\u201d O\u2019Connor began. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re such a small town. Obviously, it\u2019s been the same faces that have been in the crowd ever since I was under 10s. It means everything. I kind of broke down, my voice is gone … If I get into it now, I\u2019ll probably start crying again, so I won\u2019t do that on camera.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey raised us all the way through, so to see them, it\u2019s very hard to keep a lid on things… going back to 1948 was the last time (we won), so trying to keep a lid on that is tough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Touching on the black card he received, which is the equivalent to a \u2018sin bin\u2019 in the NRL, O\u2019Connor added that his \u201cemotions were probably a bit too high\u201d in the lead-up to his indiscretion. <\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor\u2019s captain Paul Geaney proved the difference in the second half, booting 2-2 after Dingle\u2019s slow start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Geelong defender Mark O\u2019Connor has capped off an emotional month by helping his hometown club Dingle secure its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,689,145049,651,65436,145048,2057,20783,13659,11288,60462,145046,26779,44389,3583,677,145047,8016,701,145050,8088,85],"class_list":["post-243393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-black-card","tag-brisbane","tag-defining-moment","tag-dramatic-comeback-win","tag-europe","tag-flag-hero","tag-geelong-cats","tag-grand-final","tag-grand-final-loss","tag-hometown-club","tag-ireland","tag-mark-oconnor","tag-northern-europe","tag-oceania","tag-paul-geaney","tag-premiership-player","tag-queensland","tag-representative-game","tag-sin-bin","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}