{"id":649319,"date":"2026-10-09T07:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T07:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/649319\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T07:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T07:10:12","slug":"cillian-oconnor-gets-the-ending-he-deserved-to-one-of-the-greatest-careers-in-gaa-history-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/649319\/","title":{"rendered":"Cillian O\u2019Connor gets the ending he deserved to one of the greatest careers in GAA history \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

You have to hand it to the lads on Reservoir Dubs \u2013 they were never going to let Cillian O\u2019Connor<\/a> sail off into the sunset without launching some cannon fire over his head. His retirement was always going to be a triggering event to one or two denizens of the Dublin GAA<\/a> supporters\u2019 online forum. In fairness, they were pretty balanced in their tributes. They made sure to send a few scuds in Aidan O\u2019Shea\u2019s direction too.<\/p>\n

\u201cMust have saw the writing on the wall\u2026\u201d \u201cGot his medal as a panellist\u2026\u201d \u201cElbows O\u2019Connor\u2026\u201d \u201cNever had the guts to take the hits to get the crucial scores\u2026\u201d \u201cBig Aido will probably keep going… Will play the odd league game and then phased out again\u2026\u201d <\/p>\n

Now, some will say that\u2019s small and petty. Not just of them but of us too. That an appreciation of Gaelic football<\/a>\u2019s all-time leading scorer deserves better than to be giving airtime to fellas still fighting the last decade\u2019s wars deep into 2026. But to ignore them would be to ignore a fundamental truth about one of the all-time greats of the game.<\/p>\n

Namely, that in the years that Jim Gavin\u2019s Dubs rolled across the championship plains like Panzer tanks, nobody was a bigger pain in their ass than Cillian O\u2019Connor. This was very important \u2013 and not just for Mayo<\/a>. At a time when other teams all but laid their coats down over puddles so Jack and Con and Mannion wouldn\u2019t get their feet wet, O\u2019Connor typified Mayo\u2019s refusal to play nice and usher them up the Hogan Stand steps.<\/p>\n

He did so in two distinct and crucial ways. One, by putting more goals and points on the scoreboard than anybody else, ever. As Rob Carroll, of the brilliant Gaelic Stats website has pointed out, O\u2019Connor is by a distance the highest scorer in championship matches against Dublin this century. He has scored more against Dublin (2-65 in 11 matches) than David Clifford and Colm Cooper combined (3-48 in 12 matches). <\/p>\n

\"CillianCillian O’Connor of Mayo against Roscommon in 2017. Photograph: Ryan Byrne\/Inpho <\/p>\n

And two, by being the sort of cranky, belligerent antagonist that the Dubs just didn\u2019t come across most of the time. For all his forensic coolness when tasked with putting the ball between the posts, O\u2019Connor was chippy as hell and never shied away from the darker alleys of the game. He could have spent his time diligently accumulating scores and leaving the rough stuff to the bigger horses out the pitch. That was never him.<\/p>\n

He retires 98 points clear of Michael Murphy at the top of the all-time scoring charts, having run up a monumental 32-364 (460 points). All things being equal, David Clifford (29-272, or 359) will likely pass him in the next couple of seasons and you\u2019d back Se\u00e1n O\u2019Shea (7-261, or 282) to make his way up towards O\u2019Connor\u2019s total around the turn of the decade. But everyone else is a mile back the road and even in a world of two-pointers (and potentially four-point goals), the wider peloton has a lot of climbing to do before they can see him on the horizon.<\/p>\n

The gas thing is it could have been more. O\u2019Connor kicked precisely one two-pointer in intercounty football and it came in this year\u2019s league when he was brought on as a sub against Roscommon. More to the point, the vast majority of his championship scoring was done long before he finally called it a day. <\/p>\n

\"Mayo'sMayo’s Cillian O’Connor scores a goal against Meath. Photograph: Ryan Byrne\/Inpho <\/p>\n

He has scored just 2-27 since the 2020 All-Ireland final. Incredibly, his last championship score from a free came in the 2022 All-Ireland quarter-final against Kerry. If you want to really break it down, around 93 per cent of his total scores for Mayo came before his 29th birthday. Imagine where his numbers would be had he stayed healthy.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0For the average GAA player, this time of the year brings a mix of regret and reliefOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

But your story can only be what it can only be. Had O\u2019Connor been fit and firing through the back end of his career, what would have happened to Ryan O\u2019Donoghue\u2019s development? A couple of days after O\u2019Connor did his Achilles against Clare in the league in 2021, O\u2019Donoghue went to James Horan and touted for the role of team free-taker. He was only in his second season on the panel and the likes of Conor Loftus had deputised for O\u2019Connor in the past. But O\u2019Donoghue grabbed the job and made it his.<\/p>\n

Five years later, look what happened. O\u2019Donoghue, himself a fairly spiky and bellicose individual, driven by his own All-Ireland final heartache, led Mayo to the All-Ireland O\u2019Connor and his generation had lived and died for. Anyone who met O\u2019Connor that day in Croke Park or in the weeks and months since were left in no doubt that missing out on being on the pitch didn\u2019t lessen his enjoyment one jot. He earned his All-Ireland medal. <\/p>\n

\"Mayo'sMayo’s Diarmuid O’Connor and Cillian O’Connor lift the Sam Maguire. Photograph: James Crombie\/Inpho <\/p>\n

Aidan O\u2019Shea made an acute observation in the hotel the day after Mayo won, something to the effect that anytime RT\u00c9 showed an end-of-season montage, there was always a shot of himself or O\u2019Connor, down on their knees or in tears. That\u2019s all gone now. Six weeks later, O\u2019Connor got married in Mount Juliet and had to find room in the table plan for Sam Maguire. <\/p>\n

A fitting grace note to one of the greatest careers in the history of the GAA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You have to hand it to the lads on Reservoir Dubs \u2013 they were never going to let…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[127308,14609,2179,110979,61,60,2043,4185,13019,275463,275462,112],"class_list":["post-649319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-colm-cooper","tag-david-clifford","tag-dublin-gaa","tag-football-championship","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jim-gavin","tag-mayo-gaa","tag-michael-murphy","tag-ryan-o-donoghue","tag-sean-o-shea","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}