Cillian O’Connor still under radar despite high-flying season

Even as Cillian O’Connor fell into the rhythm of his kicking style in the last seconds of the All-Ireland final against Dublin, with Mayo in desperate need of a point and everything on the line, all kinds of questions swirled overhead. It is hard to over-estimate the importance of that kick, particularly if Mayo become All-Ireland champions tonight.

This much is indisputable: had the Ballinrobe man missed his shot, then Dublin would have become the first team since Kerry in 2006 and 2007 to retain the All-Ireland title. And Mayo would have lost the final by a single point – again.

Inevitably, in discussing the reasons for this latest almost-All-Ireland campaign, the final blame would have been pinned on Mayo’s forwards. But none of that happened because of the quality of O’Connor’s strike. When you consider the enormity of that moment – the closing seconds of a physically and emotionally draining All-Ireland final, players from both sides visibly out on their feet, the conflicting emotion of Dublin supporters within seconds of entering a new unprecedented era of success and Mayo about to enter a 66th unbroken winter of All-Ireland failure – the pressure which O’Connor had to divorce his mind from is extraordinary.

Force of fate

It was a difficult shot: straight down the middle with precious little space to work with but it looked true and good from the second it left his boot. It felt as if the usual force of fate and history had been diverted.

The elusive cup had not been won but it was surely as sweet an All-Ireland moment as any Mayo person has known since 1951.

One of the constant negatives directed at Mayo over the last five decades is that for all the virtues and athleticism of their front-line players, they still lack the separating factor; the skulking genius who can upend the pattern of a game in a moment.

When Mayo began to press really, really hard under James Horan, it was sometimes breezily suggested the county team needed "a player like Michael Murphy", as if all the county board had to do was pay a visit to Panama Jacks on a Friday night to discover their pick of unstoppable powerhouse attacking midfielders who had somehow been overlooked by all county scouts.

The relocation of Aidan O’Shea as the centrifugal force in Mayo’s attack seemed to solve that puzzle last year. But critics still see in Mayo’s attacking line the unhappy absence of an all-round virtuoso like Diarmuid Connolly or a thief of souls like Colm Cooper or a player with the shimmering menace that Colm O’Neill, when fit, presents to any defence.

The favoured term for the elite of the elites has somehow wandered from the broadcast booths of American sport into the GAA lexicon: marquee players. Deep down, despite everything, there is a residual belief that Mayo do not possess one.

“It doesn’t bother me,” O’Connor said last year of that perception. “I would have heard people say it but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. As long as the management teams think I’m playing well and worthy of a squad position then I’m happy.”

Instead, O’Connor has spent his five years as a senior player steadfastly making that notion laughable. Since he was plucked from the relative obscurity of Ballintubber and handed championship free-kicking duties in 2011, O’Connor’s consistency for Mayo has been staggering.

The bare statistics and records of his career stand as irrefutable evidence of his influence on recent championships. He finished as Mayo’s top scorer in that debut season and won the young player of the year award, which he retained in 2012. (The honour returned to the O’Connor household after last year’s championship when his younger brother Diarmuid received it.)

Player of the year

He finished top scorer in the 2013 championship on 6-22. Bernard Brogan, who was named the player of the year, had the highest score from play, 3-10; Cavan’s Martin Dunne was second placed, with O’Connor in third on 5-3. In 2014, he finished the championship’s highest scorer with 5-36. James O’Donoghue, the second highest scorer and player of the year, finished with 4-24 (2-20 of the Kerry man’s total was from play: O’Connor hit 1-12 from play, the fourth highest total of the summer).

Last year, he finished as the top scorer in the championship for the third consecutive summer on 3-34. He was the top scorer in the drawn All-Ireland with 0-7; his 0-2 from play was matched only by his team-mate Andy Moran and Dublin's Paddy Andrews. And, of course, it included that late point, a score which reverberated through Mayo and the choice enclaves of England, America and further beyond.

Some scores are bigger than others. O’Connor’s point was deathlessly brave. It came down to his thirst for responsibility, a trait has set O’Connor apart from the beginning. In an interview with this newspaper in February, he recalled an under-16 game for his club which demonstrated for him the importance of stepping up.

“It was against Castlebar in Ballyhane and we had a free at the end. I had been taking them and our midfielder had the ball and was going to take it. I said to go ahead. And he missed it. I shouldn’t have made him take it even though he is a year older. And he was in bits. I felt rotten about it for a month. Because he wasn’t a free-taker. I was deferring to age. But part of me was thinking, it was an awkward free on the right side. Everyone was blaming him and nobody knew I had dodged it. It wasn’t a big thing but after that, I took the frees.”

Scarifying speed

The thing about O’Connor is that he doesn’t behave like one of the stars of the game, he just is one.

He doesn’t have the scarifying speed which has become the most valued currency in the contemporary game and there is nothing particularly flashy about his ball-carrying or his kicking style. He has a torpedo-range off his right foot, which he favours whenever possible. And he is an absolute workhorse when it comes to defending and closing down.

Even though he was one of the younger members of James Horan’s squad in 2011, he quickly acquired the aura of seniority and ultra-reliability. Because his form was so consistently good, it was as if he has been taken for granted.

People fretted over whether Andy Moran and Alan Dillon could ever be replaced, over where O'Shea should play and whether the Mayo forwards were good enough. O'Connor just got on with the business of putting up exceptional scoring averages, working hard and, as he got older, developing the necessary strength and the uncompromising mentality of an athlete obsessed with achieving his goal.

You could see it most clearly when the final whistle went. Some of the players lingered on the field, looking wrecked or jaded. O’Connor was out of there like a bullet, his face a mask of stony intent and not worrying about bumping Dublin’s Jonny Cooper as he departed. In his mind, he was already travelling to the replay.

Much has been made of the fact that a few of the Mayo players obliged requests for media interviews afterwards. The captain didn’t. He vanished. It was something that caught the eye of former Kerry player Paul Galvin, another forward who the watching public was slow to concede belonged to the ranks of elite forwards simply because his style and approach didn’t quite match prevailing idea of what a Gaelic football forward should be.

"There was one forward on show who I've watched for five years now develop into maybe the best all-round forward in the game," Galvin wrote in his column for the Sunday Times after the replay.

“I swapped jerseys with Cillian O’Connor after an All-Ireland semi-final in 2011. He scored a goal that day and there was something about his body language that impressed me. The level of aggression in his game is just right. He works hard, he makes good decisions on the ball. He’s accurate and he comes up big in the big games, yet you don’t hear much talk of him in the build-up.”

All of these are undeniable points but Galvin has been the first to cast O’Connor as something more than Mayo’s Mr Dependable. He has been the first to suggest Cillian O’Connor not only the represents “marquee forward” which Mayo supposedly lack but that he may just be the best all-round attacking player in the Gaelic football.

Specialist finisher

It’s a strong argument. O’Connor may not be a speedster or a flamboyant, specialist finisher. But as a generalist, he does a lot of things very, very well all the time.

And that most recent score of his which brought the teams back for another day out contained within it all the elements demanded of great players: leadership and grace under pressure and composure.

And, best of all, afterwards, the sense of a player not distracted from the main objective. Of all the Dublin and Mayo forwards spoken about since the replay, O’Connor has hardly been mentioned. As he said, that doesn’t bother him in the slightest. He will just get on with it.