Cillian McDaid realising true potential after taking scenic route back to a Croke Park finale
CODE BREAKERS: Cillian McDaid has been key to Galway's progress to the championship decider today.
Today’s closing scene of the 2022 football championship bridges a seven-year gap to Cillian McDaid’s one and only All-Ireland final appearance at Croke Park.
That lone final appearance at GAA HQ was the minor decider of 2015.
Hold on a second, though, was it not a year later in ‘16 when Galway were involved in the minor football decider, the afternoon David Clifford posted an early entry into his now sizeable portfolio of wondergoals?
Correct, it was the county’s minor hurlers, not footballers, that reached the All-Ireland in 2015. McDaid, a dual minor, was sent into the action six minutes from the end as Jeff Lynskey’s young charges saw off Liam Cahill’s Tipp.
Hardly two months after pocketing an All-Ireland minor hurling medal, McDaid packed in the hurling. His sporting path from there to here has contained more twists and turns than a malfunctioning satnav, his potential inside the four white lines seeming destined for so long to go unfulfilled.
McDaid is a native of Craughwell, a hurling village. The big ball, though, was always close at hand growing up.
His father, Garvan, himself a footballer who lined out for Askeaton in the 1984 Limerick county final, was a leading force in developing the football wing of the club.
In 2005, Garvan brought an U8 football team to a blitz in Kilconnell. Never before had Craughwell fielded a football team. Toddlers and history-makers.
Six years later, that same gaggle of seven- and eight-year-olds had morphed into a county U14 Féile winning team, taking down a host of football hotbeds en route.
The club very nearly completed a Féile double in 2011 as the hurlers also reached the final, losing out to Clarinbridge.
Pat Monaghan was in charge of the Craughwell U14 hurlers that year. His son is Thomas Monaghan, the full-of-running half-forward on Henry Shefflin’s Galway team.
Thomas and Cillian are the same age, the talented pair two of 12 players to start on both Féile teams 11 years ago now.
“He was very strong on the ball, fierce athletic,” says Pat of McDaid’s hurling ability.
Football in Craughwell did not go beyond U16 in those times and so when McDaid reached the minor age-grade, he began playing his football in the colours of nearby Monivea Abbey.
And once his minor years were behind him, he decided to put hurling in the rearview mirror as well.
“It was always going to be difficult to marry the two as he got older. We had to accept he was going to concentrate on one code, and Gaelic football was always his preferred code.
“We lost a county minor semi-final to Clarinbridge in 2015 and that was his final game of hurling.” But just as McDaid was making headway with the football, he then parked that too.
In November of 2017, the then 20-year-old put pen to paper with AFL side Carlton. The Australian experiment, though, lasted all of 11 months.
After playing a couple of early-season games with Carlton’s VFL team Northern Blues, he suffered a stress fracture in his left foot in March of 2018. The injury sidelined him for 14 weeks and he only returned to play four more games with the Blues before the season wrapped up.
"The injury was the big issue, just not being able to train. I went out there to play football, I didn't go out there to rehab,” McDaid said in an interview after returning home.
“I turned 21 in the middle of August and probably wasn't in the happiest or best of spirits for those few weeks. Everyone thinks you are living the dream, over in a lovely country, great weather, great city, getting paid to play football. I just found it was very different from that in my experience.
"I had my health, so happiness was the other thing I wanted back. That's probably why I came home in the end."
He wasn’t long off the tarmac at Dublin airport when Kevin Walsh was on the other end of the phone inviting him back into the county set-up.
2019 proved another stop-start season for McDaid, recurring injuries meaning he was limited to four starts and two substitute appearances across Galway’s year. His transition back to Gaelic football was everything but seamless.
A knee injury on the first night back training in the spring of 2021 finished that particular inter-county year before it had even begun. A break he simply could not catch.
Until 2022, that was.
The 24-year-old started all bar two of Galway’s round-robin games in the League, this lack of injury interruption largely alien to him. And while he found himself on the bench for Galway’s championship opener, his burning of Mayo’s Enda Hession for a point within 90 seconds of his introduction and his block down on Cillian O’Connor at the other end of the MacHale Park field meant he was promoted to the starting team for the Leitrim semi-final. And there he has remained, he and midfield partner Paul Conroy two of Galway’s most influential performers en route to this afternoon’s final.
“He played very well against Derry, showed a lot of leadership,” Pádraic Joyce said last week of his new number nine.
“He struggled with injuries over the years. He has stayed injury free this year, which is testament to the S&C crew, and it's great.” On these pages the day after the Connacht final, Examiner columnist Éamonn Fitzmaurice singled McDaid out for the holes he punched in the Roscommon defence and the scores he created.
There was no need to single him out in the subsequent All-Ireland quarter-final for he was Galway’s standout player.
His regulation time contribution included a first-half point, winning a free that was converted by Shane Walsh, and involvement in the early stages of Galway’s first goal.
In extra-time against Armagh, Gerry Fahy witnessed a performance he’d waited five years for.
Fahy was the Galway U21 manager in 2017. At right-half back on his team was an injury-free and in-form McDaid, the team’s top-scorer on the afternoon of their All-Ireland final defeat to Dublin.
“He rescued us in that year’s Connacht U21 final. He had a huge game for us and kicked some vital scores,” Fahy recalls.
“When I heard he was going to Australia later that year, I got in touch to wish him well. You knew wherever Cillian went, he was going to make a contribution.” But for injury, Fahy is certain McDaid would have been lost to the maroon for a lot longer than one year.
“I’d have no doubt he would have made it over there because of the mindset Cillian has. When Cillian applies himself to something, he goes ahead and does it.
“Go back to the extra-time goal against Armagh. Cillian decided something needed to be done here or otherwise Galway were on their way out. Not many midfielders would have made the run he did to be on the end of that play and to execute the finish so well. Cillian showed that maturity. He said something had to be done and he followed up by doing it, as well as kicking the point at the end to force penalties.
“That’s his mindset, so if Cillian decided he was going to give Australia a real go, which he was, I have no doubt he would have made it but for the injuries.
“It was unfortunate from his point of view, but we were delighted to have him back. We are delighted number one that he is healthy and well and number two that he is showing his true potential this year with the outstanding football he is playing.” And so say all of Galway.
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