The Kieran Shannon Interview: ‘I had the opportunity to challenge fellas and I didn’t do it enough’

Until he stepped out of a Cork dressing room for the last time, at 37, Donncha O’Connor was a symbol of Rebel defiance. All the same, he regrets Cork didn’t show more resistance during the latter part of his career and wishes he could have done more to arrest a slipping culture.

For a long time, it seemed like Donncha O’Connor would never set foot in a Cork dressing room and then it seemed like he would never leave it. He was already 25 by the time he played his first championship game for them, then 37 when he played his last. In between those bookends he would experience the whole gamut that sport would have to offer – defeat and victory, humiliation and vindication – and that was just 2010 alone. But well before the end he’d achieved that rare distinction for a footballer in a county notorious for being so reserved at doling out the love for its big-ball players – first-name status. For some time now his surname has ceased to be necessary. Simply Donncha suffices.