Today’s Question: Should Cillian O’Connor start on Sunday?

Dermot Flanagan knows what’s going through Cillian O’Connor’s head more than most this week. In 1997 he was the big injury concern in a Mayo team before the final against Kerry after picking up a strain.

He started but pulled up after seven minutes. Mayo brought on current manager James Horan in his place. But Horan was a forward and Flanagan a corner-back so a raft of positional changes were made, resulting in Pat Holmes picking up Maurice Fitzgerald who went onto produce a scoring exhibition and end the Kingdom’s 11 year wait for a title.

The risk of starting Flanagan had backfired badly.

O’Connor, pictured, who dislocated his shoulder against Tyrone in the semi-final, has resumed training and could be in line to play at the weekend after responding well to treatment. A similar risk for Mayo? Not at all says Flanagan.

“If it was a choice between starting him or bringing him on as a sub I would start him,” said Flanagan.

“The difference is in my case I picked up a new strain 12 days before the final. It was very difficult to grade. In Cillian’s situation they knew about it for 11 months. With that injury you can do a lot of things to ensure you have a full impact on the game. It’s different from other types of injuries. It didn’t prevent him taking a full part in training. They just have to assess the risk themselves.”

The other big difference for Flanagan is the strength in depth on the Mayo panel to replace O’Connor if needed.

“If I had known it would go in the first five or seven minutes I would never have played. But they know so much about Cillian’s injury the risk assessment is a lot clearer. I would say start him. There are obvious replacements if it does happen again. They played the league and the Tyrone game without him and others stepped up to the mark.

“The role I played in that game was to play in the last line of defence, which meant I was seen as the fall guy. It wasn’t as if there was an obvious number four to come in. Fergal Costello and Anthony McGarry were there but they were half-backs. This is a different scenario. There are other options if Cillian goes off or doesn’t start and they are tried and tested.”

Given that O’Connor’s injury occurred four weeks ago, many are surprised he is in contention to play at all. But UCC Professor Michael Molloy, who directs the Masters in Sports medicine course in the university, does not think it is the risk being portrayed, given that the Ballintubber man dislocated his shoulder three times in the last 11 months.

“If the shoulder is very loose and unstable it is a risk but people do play with recurrent dislocations and get away with it,” he said.

“You wouldn’t get away with it in rugby but football is reasonably stable. Most importantly, if he has no pain and can get through the training sessions he’s not going to do serious damage to it by playing. It’s obviously a stable shoulder. With some of those injuries it can fall out of the shoulder very easily but he’s obviously not in that category.”

While O’Connor will need reconstructive surgery at the end of the season, Professor Molloy believes there are no medical reasons why he could not play 70 minutes on Sunday.

“That’s a very reasonable thing to do [wait until the season is over]. Providing he’s got good movement in the shoulder and it’s pain free there’s no reason why he can’t play.

“Mayo’s medical team will have taken O’Connor through the standard practice of building his shoulder muscles up first and they will know if the shoulder is up to it. It’s not complicated, you just build up the shoulder muscles and do a lot of physio work. You couldn’t do the exercises if it was very uncomfortable so you’re talking about a mild problem here. You have to go through the training and take a hit to be sure.”