Micko mulls over his sporting odyssey

LOSING the five-in-row opportunity to Offaly in the 1982 All-Ireland final was not Mick O’Dwyer’s biggest disappointment in football.

Offaly denied a great Kerry team their place in history with a last minute goal from Seamus Darby and O’Dwyer was devastated for months, but then was able to put things in perspective: “Matt Connor, one of the greatest Gaelic footballers I ever saw, was seriously injured in a car accident later that year and is now paralysed from the hips down. “When you consider something like that, you ask yourself, ‘what do five All-Irelands in-a-row really mean in that context?’ It was only fitting that a player of Matt’s calibre won an All-Ireland medal.”

Despite steering Laois to their first All-Ireland semi-final in 57 years, O’Dwyer continues to play down his role.