Dubs legend: I can't see Diarmuid Connolly coming back

When Diarmuid Connolly returned from last summer’s US sojourn and sat initially on the St Vincent’s substitutes bench, he wore a pair of official Dublin training bottoms.

At that stage, Connolly seemed likely to get an opportunity to wear them again for real as a county player in 2019 but having reached mid-January now, no news is clearly bad news.

Senan Connell, a Dublin forward throughout the 2000s before Connolly came on board, has predicted that the 31-year-old won’t be back.

It’s a thought that will devastate Dublin supporters who rate the five-time All-Ireland winner as among the greatest to pull on the sky blue jersey.

“I can’t see it happening,” said Connell of a Connolly comeback. “Just from adding up the bits and pieces. There’s not too much given away, as we know, from that camp. I think Jim Gavin’s motto is, ‘there’s no stars on this team — we’ll win with or without you’. I think he’s proven that.

I’d find it difficult to see Diarmuid coming back into that panel and I haven’t heard anything to the contrary.

It’s just over 12 months since Connolly tipped Brian Howard to enjoy a breakthrough 2018 season. Little was the experienced forward to know that Howard, who ended the season as an All-Star, would effectively replace him with Connolly limited to just a matter of minutes in a League game against Mayo.

“We don’t know why he’s gone or why he left, so we don’t know if he’s even going to be asked back,” said Connell. “But what we do know is that Jim is ruthless. He was looking forward and he was looking for the replacement and it’s interesting that the replacement was Brian Howard and that Diarmuid referenced him the year before as ‘one to watch’ and he ends up taking his jersey.

“I’d love to see Diarmuid back in the Dublin jersey, he’s the most influential player that we could have. At a time when scores were needed against Mayo (in the 2017 All-Ireland final) he produced. He can turn a game in an instant and he seems to... like, his antenna is up the bigger the game. You see him playing club football and he can look disinterested. Jim will probably and understandably believe that he has the cover.”

Connolly played for the Donegal Boston club in the US last summer and won a local championship title, scoring 12 points in the final.

But he has played little inter-county football since 2016 with his 2017 Championship ruined by a suspension for interfering with a match official. He returned late that summer and turned the All-Ireland final against Mayo with a second-half tour de force. Connell said that while he doesn’t know why Connolly left Gavin’s panel during last year’s League, he doesn’t think it’s down to individual ego or a lack of work-rate.

If you put a player-cam on him and watch him closely, he does a lot of the hard work,” said Connell.

“If you talk to players, from the little snippets you might get in the off-season, they will talk about how selfless he is in terms of his runs.

“Because he attracts attention, he would drag two players away. When he goes on a run away from the play, dragging two players out, it opens things up. So I’m not sure that it’s a case he’s a player who believes he’s an individual genius and that he can play it his way. That would only be speculation.”

Connell played with current Dublin manager Gavin who, with five All-Ireland wins to his credit, has agreed to extend his spell in charge until the end of 2021 at least.

“I think he’ll build another team,” said Connell. “When this team eventually does go down, his legacy is going to be can he build another team from scratch? We’re looking at the underage set-up in Dublin now and they’re not shooting the lights out, for the last couple of years. So if that continues maybe the challenge will be there for him to rebuild. That’s when Jim is going to really prove he is one of the greatest managers ever, if he can build another team.”