Kerry's Dara Moynihan opens up on toll of nightmare year, hip surgery, and football future
PAIN GAME: 'I woke up the next day and I honestly thought I'd torn either my groin or hip flexor clean off the bone,” says Dara Moynihan now. Portrait: Tatyana McGough
PARK your Kerry curiosity. This Dara Moynihan chat devotes minimal time to the possibility of a second coming in green and gold. To fixate on inter-county matters after his detailing of a “nightmare fucking year” would be to lack any semblance of awareness.
Far more important than restarting one's Kerry career is the ability to get out of bed in the morning and successfully perform the simple task of putting on your shoes and socks.
Far more important than rejoining the Kingdom dressing-room is being able to go about your daily activities pain-free and Difene-free.
Far more important than operating at the highest level is to actually enjoy your football and not deeply resent having to go out the door to training of a fine midweek evening.
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Far more important than just about everything is release from your dark mood and the upstairs turmoil that weighed so heavily for the bones of a year.
At 26 years young, Dara Moynihan had reached a point of physical incapacity where he couldn’t put on his shoes and socks in the morning. His fiancée, Saoirse, was regularly called upon to finish dressing him.
He’d got to a point where he hated stepping onto a football field because it offered the sharpest reminder of the pain he was suffering and the extent to which he was removed from his old, happy self.
He was sick of the game his life revolved around. But without the game his life revolved around, a gaping hole hung over his everyday existence.
He knew of nothing else, nor did he want to know of anything else. Football taken away, he was narky, unsettled, and temporarily without purpose.
So yeah, no apologies for burying at the bottom his thoughts on any future Kerry comeback. This conversation prioritises Dara Moynihan the person, not the might-be-again inter-county half-forward.
***
Slow, cumbersome injuries are nothing at all new in Moynihan’s world. His is a diverse medical chart. There’s been a stress fracture of the foot. There’s been a quad muscle issue. He even had the good fortune to mangle his ankle on the Tuesday before the 2022 All-Ireland final win over Galway.
Sometime in the middle of 2023, he started to experience discomfort in his left hip. Thinking the problem to be pubis-related, he rehabbed accordingly. Only sporadically sore, he continued to train and play away.
He’s far more clear on the date when the pain upgraded from sporadic to permanent, when the ability to line out weekend after weekend was pulled from him.
On August 2, 2024, Spa were second best to Kenmare in the Kerry club championship. Dara played the full game, no problem. Popped over to his cousin’s house afterwards, not a hint of the trouble that was waiting on his own doorstep.
“I woke up the next day and I honestly thought I'd torn either my groin or hip flexor clean off the bone,” he recalled this week. “I couldn't walk. I couldn't sit down. I was in constant pain. I didn't know what the fuck was wrong.
“We were power-hosing the house that day and I said to my brother, ‘I can’t do this’. I had to lie down on the ground with the pain of it. It was killing me.”
He stepped off the pitch for 12 weeks. He went searching for answers while sidelined.
Inside at work at EBS Killarney one lunchtime, he came across an interview with England flanker Tom Curry. The symptoms Curry spelled out resonated. And so, as you do, he emailed the secretary of the surgeon that got Curry back on the field and begged for a consult.
Moynihan traveled to London on the October Bank Holiday weekend to meet Professor Damian Griffin. Under sedation, his left hip was pulled hither and thither. The diagnosis was that a great deal of damage had been done. The cure, though, was less straightforward.
He fell between two surgical stools. A keyhole procedure would be a waste of everyone’s time, but the problem area also wasn’t far enough degenerated to merit ceramic hip resurfacing. And so, he limped into 2025 armed with a cortisone injection and stubborn determination to succeed in green and gold.
His miniscule 2025 match minutes tell one story. That is how he spent the entire spring and early summer attempting to suffocate into submission his hip torment. He never featured on a matchday panel until the second round of the All-Ireland series on June 14. He saw four minutes during the spanking by Meath the same day.
He was an unused sub against Cavan, served 100 seconds as a temporary replacement in the season-turning victory over Armagh, and failed to make the 26 for the subsequent All-Ireland semi-final and final wins.
“Yerra, I was never really at the races for it,” Moynihan replied when asked about his non-involvement on the concluding afternoon against Donegal. “When you were looking at me training, was I ever at the level required if someone was needed to come on. Management and medical staff gave me every chance, but I was never really myself. Obviously, you’d be thick and disappointed not making panels, but when you look back on it, you realise, I did well to even be playing at all.”
And then there’s the story of his everyday. A nightmare 2025, minus the expletives. Body and mind relentlessly plagued. His behaviour, on occasion, snappy and short.
“At times, I wasn’t a very nice person to be around,” he admitted. “The pain would make you narky more than anything. It was constantly at you, so you’d be narky at someone or the people around you because you’re in pain.
“Mentally, it was just a very tough year. You were constantly moody because I went from starting nearly every championship game in 2023 and ‘24 to not playing at all. And knowing that was down to myself because of the hip was tough to come to terms with.
“I nearly got sick of football at that stage. I was sick of putting on the boots. I was just sick of going out on the pitch every day knowing I was going to be in pain, knowing the next day you’re going to be broke up, and knowing the following day you’re going to be sore. Yeah, just mentally tough.”
The tipping point was having to ask Saoirse to put on his shoes in the morning because, at 26 going on 27, he could not.
“Around August, things started to get worse. I couldn’t really hinge at the hip to get down to put on my shoes and socks. I’d to get my fiancée to put them on in the morning. And if I didn’t take Difene going out training, I couldn’t run.
“If I didn’t have any ambitions of going back playing, I could have delayed the surgery longer, but I still couldn't put on my shoes. That was the end of it, really. I was like, I have to get something done. I realised I can't keep living like this.”
Paradoxically, though, the road out equally troubled him.
Moynihan won an All-Ireland minor at right-half-forward in 2016. He won back-to-back Hogan Cups with the Sem either side of that minor All-Ireland. He graduated straight from U21 to senior. He’s clocked 28 championship appearances in green and gold.
His fear was that the latter number would remain unmoved.
“When the surgeon told me resurfacing was the only option, I didn’t think you’d be able to come back from that. I was like, ‘Jesus, at 26, I’m not going to be able to play football again’. There were a lot of tears.
“I didn't really see anything else without football. I didn't really see any enjoyment in anything else because I wasn't playing football. Your whole life revolves around football.
“Mentally, it was tough to come to terms with it because, as I said, when you're 26 and you're told you need a hip resurfacing, you're saying, why me? Obviously, there’s a lot worse things in life. I'm not sounding selfish or anything. But at the time, it was kinda like, I am going to be told to retire at 26, and out of nowhere, like.”
Monday, November 3, at St John & St Elizabeth Hospital in London, was the date of his full reset.
When the patient is young and active, ceramic hip resurfacing is preferable to a full replacement. Moynihan’s medical vocab is so proficient from having researched the procedure late into countless nights that he's best to explain.
“They dislocate the hip and pare down the ball because there was no cartilage left. They put a ceramic cap on that. Then they pare down your acetabulum, which is your socket. They put a ceramic cup in that, so that basically acts as your cartilage.”
Home is 30 seconds over the road from the Spa clubhouse. Upon return from London, he was in the club gym twice daily. Fifteen minutes on the bike each time and some light mobility work to get the joints moving. His dad, Timmy, Saoirse, and her dad, Liam, shared the load in taxiing him over and back.
Spa chairman Tadhg Hickey reckons Dara was resident in the club gym every day for four months straight.
The same as he behaved on the pitch, there was no standing still in every imaginable aspect of rehab. He sought out those who’d traveled similar journeys. He sought education, expertise, but above all, reassurance.
He reached out to retired rugby player Seán O’Brien. He reached out to former NFL safety Caden Sterns and Olympic-medal basketballer Cierra Burdick. The pair put him in touch with a PT they had worked with, Alex Shafiro. Kerry physios Jimmy Galvin and Paudie McQuinn played significant roles too. Conor McManus was another on the end of a call to share his own experiences.
Recovery is six months. He privately circled April 19 of this year. A Division 1 County League game at home to Beaufort. He came on with five minutes to go, had two or three possessions, and kicked “one bad shot”. He was back and he was pain-free.
The conversation is 33 minutes old when we raise the subject of restarting his stalled inter-county career. We read to him a quote from his old Kerry teammate, Stefan Okunbor.
“I have been very unlucky, but I have got far more to give Kerry. If my body holds up, I do have time on my side. Don't write me off just yet,” Okunbor told the the week of the 2023 All-Ireland final.
Dara Moynihan's version? Turning 28 in September, the clock is absolutely not against him.
“I am not ruling it out or anything like that, but when I got the hip done, I literally said to myself that nothing else matters other than I just want to get back enjoying my football because obviously I didn’t in 2025.
“I have four or five club games under the belt now and I am enjoying it, but I know I can still improve and I know I am not where I want to be.”
Watch this space.
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