Colin Sheridan: Cillian O'Connor should be Footballer of the Year. Here's why ...
Mayo’s Cillian O’Connor was top scorer in the 2020 championship, averaging 11 points a game. However those scoring stats are still unlikely to see him edge out one of the all- conquering Dublin players from becoming footballer of the year.
In a Gaelic football season of plucky plot twists but predictable outcomes, the Footballer of the Year nominations, announced last Friday, stayed very much on script. The shortlist of three saw the 2018 winner, Dublin’s Brian Fenton, joined by his teammate, Ciarán Kilkenny, and the token outsider candidate, Mayo’s Cillian O’Connor.
With Dublin’s dominance showing no sign of abating any time soon, you could predict without fear of ridicule that Fenton, Kilkenny, and probably Con O’Callaghan will likely populate any shortlist for each of the next five years. That’s assuming Jack McCaffrey stays exiled. There will always be one Cillian O’Connor amongst them, and he’ll presumably be called David Clifford. As Gaelic football increasingly becomes monopolised by one dominant force, so do it's individual awards. Which, in and of itself is paradoxical. Dublin are perhaps the greatest football team to ever play. The root of their greatness is the mantra of team uber alles. Nobody is irreplaceable. It is admirable, and, in their execution of it, historically successful. It shouldn't lead to an assumption that they automatically have the best player, however.
