'She probably robbed the career that I wanted' - Luke Connolly on sister Megan's soccer success
FAMILY AFFAIR: Megan Connolly of Ireland, with her family, after the FIFA Women's World Cup 2023 qualifier match against Finland at Tallaght Stadium in Dublin. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
Luke Connolly had Cian Sisk’s head fried. Pestered, and then some.
On the same Tuesday evening the Irish women were in Hampden Park trying to purchase a World Cup ticket, the Nemo men were below in Trabeg training for their own World Cup.
The clash meant Luke, reluctantly, had to give the first half of the women’s game a skip. But while his eyes couldn’t be trained on matters Clydeside, he was hardly going to tune out altogether. Not a chance. Sisk, Nemo’s S&C man, was put on update duty.
Connolly’s play-off interest was obvious. Younger sister Megan is a staple in Vera Pauw’s team, albeit she was absent from the stage in Glasgow because of rib and kidney injuries suffered in the play-off-clinching group win at home to Finland a month earlier.
“Cian had my phone and so I had regular updates from him,” began Luke. “It got to the point where he actually couldn't focus on training because I was asking him so many times, 'Would you just refresh it again?'” They eventually finished training and off home shot Luke to join injured sister Megan, dad Mick, and mam Freda on the couch for the second half.
One historic Amber Barrett goal later and the Connolly’s are planning a summer spent down under.
“Strangely, Megan seemed the calmest of the four of us during the second half. But when the final whistle went, it was the first time she showed the emotion of what it meant. A special moment to have been able to share it with her.” Surreal too.
“A bizarre conversation to have about your sister getting ready to play in a World Cup,” continued Luke. “I remember getting taken out of school to watch Ireland v Germany in 2002. To see her now doing that is bizarre.”
When the final whistle went on that Tuesday evening, the moment was also a deeply special one for their dad. And not simply because his little girl was heading off to the World Cup.
When Megan Connolly reached an age where it was no longer feasible or permitted to stay kicking ball with the boys, dad Mick made sure she wasn’t lost to the game.
He set about getting street league and schoolgirls teams off the ground in College Corinthians. He visited schools in the locality to let them know that girls teams from U12 up were being established. He saw it all the way through to U18 and beyond.
“As much as he made teams for girls and got girls involved in sport, and as great as that was, the main aim was to give Megan a team to play with to progress her career. And if she wanted to pursue it, to give her the best platform.
“You can see his enjoyment now. When that goal went in, he paced the kitchen and didn’t know what to do with himself.
“We are probably more happy for him than her, just because everything he wanted to happen has happened and they are now getting ready for a World Cup and he is planning on renting houses and booking flights. In our house anyway, it is special.”
Luke, 29, is four years Megan’s senior. In between them is sister Nicole (we got the sporting traits, Nicole got everything else”).
Two dead-ball specialists. Two players operating to very high levels within their respective spheres. Do they bounce much off each other?
“I more so live vicariously through Megan as she probably robbed the career that I wanted,” says Luke, with familiar Nemo frankness.
“She was the first to leave home. She had an incredible freshman year with Florida State University where she kinda won everything she could. Had a couple of injuries then and a couple of difficult years.
“To see the way she handled that. They won a national championship in her last year where she was a really important member of the panel. The regard and esteem she was held in by her teammates spoke volumes of how she carried herself over there.
“Going into a professional set-up then and where she is after getting herself with Ireland; I remember driving up to Tallaght two years ago worrying if she’d get her game. Now the country is talking about her being injured.”
For a time there near the beginning of the last decade, it looked as if Luke too would head down the soccer route and leave behind Nemo and Gaelic football.
In the autumn of 2012, and with Nemo gone out of the county championship, the then 20-year-old was free to go off playing soccer for the remainder of the year.
He was motoring well for Corinthians’ senior side at the time and got called up to the Munster Senior League squad for the inter-pros. Soccer was his focus.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘maybe I can make a go of this’,” Connolly told this writer in a 2018 interview. “I was really enjoying the soccer and the appetite wasn’t there for football. It just got stale. I fell out of love with the game.” And but for a “Ferguson chat” from Billy Morgan, he might not have returned.
In 2013, Connolly was back juggling both. 2013 should have been his first county final appearance. Instead, he was an onlooker as Nemo fell to Castlehaven. Soccer had again stuck its nose in.
“I got injured playing soccer three weeks before the final. Probably still a pain point for some fellas in the club,” the Nemo sharpshooter quipped this week.
“It was a cup game in Kinsale. I jumped over a fella to avoid a tackle, landed awkwardly, and had a fracture on my knee.”
That must have been a fun call explaining the injury to then Nemo boss Steven O’Brien.
“We were playing Clonmel Commercials the next day in a challenge. I said the knee isn't right, in the hope that the scan would reveal nothing, which it didn't.
“Any conversation with Steve would be difficult, not to mind telling him that I was injured for a county final against Castlehaven.”
He hasn’t missed a county final since. Of the four final victories he’s been involved in, he’s hit the net in all bar one. In the last two, 2019 and ‘20, he bagged a pair in each.
“It's a habit I hope I keep up. It's probably a tough one to maintain. It's somewhere in the back of the mind to maintain that.”
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