Cillian O'Connor fighting fit again and ready for another crack with Mayo

Heading into his 14th intercounty season, the sharpshooter is feeling upbeat.

Fri, 26 Jan, 2024 - 07:31

John Fogarty

It is with a great sense of pleasure that Cillian O’Connor can report he is fully fit for the first time in almost three years.

Declaring that he is “loving the journey with Mayo”, it’s clear the 31-year-old is in a fine mood. Lionel Messi is mentioned as an example of a player who excelled in his 30s – “First time I’ve been in the same sentence as Messi so I’ll take that,” he smiles.

Just how fierce do Mayo players want a starting jersey? “We’re competitive animals at the best of times,” he says. “I’ve seen lads falling out with each other playing 25 in the team hotel the night before.”

This may be his 14th season, but O’Connor subtracts one. “I feel that year I missed in 2021 is a year I have back. I didn’t have the slog of a full season that year, I didn’t have the banging and trouble on the joints, the running and all that… that’s one way of looking at it.”

Since that June afternoon in Ennis three years ago when he heard a rip and it was later discovered he had ruptured his Achilles heel, O’Connor has started just five league or championship games for Mayo, only one of them coming in the former.

In that fateful Division 2 semi-final win over Clare, the Ballintubber man scored 1-4 as he did in the previous game against Meath. In both wins over Down and Westmeath, he picked off eight points as he appeared to be picking up where he left off when he claimed a second All-Star in 2020.

He began all four championship games in 2022 but his solitary start last season came against Roscommon in the league and he was reduced to three substitute appearances in the championship.

“Came back before Christmas for pre-season, was training fine, thankfully,” he recalls. “Was exciting with a new management team, new group, couple of good faces, so good buzz.

“Then bit of a break at Christmas, was fine for January, then around February had a bit of a hamstring flare up that just didn’t really go away, to be honest. Then it just pinged a couple of times, once in a challenge game, and once actually when I came on against Roscommon (in Connacht SFC quarter-final) it went again. So that set me back, came back then, I think, the week of the Galway game, to training, and as you said, was just playing catch up all year, really. Very stop-start and frustrating.”

O’Connor knows the cameo roles he was restricted to in last year’s championship were justified. “Personally, when you haven’t been fully training you second guess yourself, or you delay for a split second, or think about a pass and the ball is knocked out of your hand, if you’re chasing a corner back.

“So I’d say sharpness is how it manifest the most, and that’s why we train, that’s what we’re working on two times a week in the glorious sunshine of January.” So, now fully fit, will he take it well if he’s benched for games like facing the old enemy in Salthill on Sunday? He pauses before offering, “Yeah, I would. If somebody is saying that because they are trying to gauge your performance and help you along then obviously you are going to be receptive to it. No, I would be completely fine with that. I would trust the management. If it’s for the betterment of yourself and for the team, I am happy.”

With the exception of 2018, last season’s All-Ireland quarter-final defeat to Dublin was O’Connor’s earliest ever championship exit with Mayo. He still took some positives from it. “We’ve obviously sat down with management and had internal conversations ourselves, reviewed it as best we can. But trying to find that silver bullet is never easy.

“There was some really good form throughout the early season, and middle of the season, and even towards the end there was very good passages of play, patterns of play, evident even in the games we lost.

“But you know things can turn very quickly in a couple of key moments, then you’re looking back through a completely different lens. So I think consistency is something we’re chasing. There’s no magic solution, unfortunately.”