Niall Morgan: Conn Kilpatrick 'will never know the extent of how many people he has helped'

Morgan has spoken of his pride in how his Edendork and Tyrone team-mate Kilpatrick has faced his gambling addiction

After their All-Ireland final success last month when Conn Kilpatrick and Niall Morgan performed impressively against Mayo, both men are up for All-Stars in December. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

Niall Morgan has spoken of his pride in how his Edendork and Tyrone team-mate Conn Kilpatrick has faced his gambling addiction.

After their All-Ireland final success last month when both men performed impressively against Mayo, both men are up for All-Stars in December.

It’s been a dream of a first full season for Kilpatrick but Morgan knows some of the travails he had endured before it, which he detailed in his recent interview on RTÉ’s Claire Byrne Live. “Well, Conn plays for my club obviously — and even I didn’t know the extent of things. I knew the issue was there the first time around. I knew he had got help, I knew that it had been fixed.

“Then I heard the relapse had happened. I don’t like being intrusive, I made sure that everything was okay and stuff like that. But I didn’t know the extent of it. I think it was a massively brave thing to do. He put himself in a very vulnerable position. I know that the GPA did provide him help in that, and his family and friends and the club were all behind him as well.

“I’m proud, not only of him on the football pitch but for what he’s done because he’ll never know the extent of how many people he has helped, both now and going into the future.”

Morgan continued: “I think it shows the human side of him too. People all too often see county players as...that we’re there for entertainment nearly, that we don’t have lives outside of actually playing county football.

“For him to put himself in that vulnerable position of almost playing the bad guy, I suppose, and expressing what he has been through and being able to turn his life to the extent where it helped him on the pitch to become an All-Ireland winner, I think that’s only going to reap serious positive rewards in the future for him and for people in a similar position.”

Morgan confirmed the Sam Maguire Cup, or a replica of it, is currently doing the rounds in Tyrone. “I’m a teacher and it coming into our school last Tuesday (week) was unbelievable. We had a photographer in. It’s still dampened it a wee bit that the kids can’t hold it or raise it.”

It may be just over a month since he walked up the Hogan Stand steps but the 30-year-old admits the achievement has been transformational. “Oisín McConville said it to me on a podcast that my life would change forever afterwards. You’re sort of thinking, ‘What’s he talking about?’

“But things have changed. You’re now being introduced everywhere as ‘Niall Morgan, All-Ireland winner’. You’re being asked to do a lot of things. It comes with the territory. I often say it that after 2018 (All-Ireland final loss to Dublin), nobody wanted to speak to me so it’s only positive. It’s great. It’s everything you ever dreamed of but the biggest thing now is trying to repeat it.”