HE’S ONE OF the best footballers of the country, a recent All-Ireland senior winner with both club and county and picked up an Allstar award for his exploits last summer.
Yet for all his flamboyance on the pitch and dazzling attacking showings, Diarmuid Connolly doesn’t have a huge media profile.
Much like Mayo football icon Ciaran McDonald, whose Second Captains appearance last week yielded so much attention, Connolly has been reticent in his media dealings.
Yesterday the 27 year-old stepped forward to break his silence at the Dublin senior club championships launch in Croke Park.
There were clues in the event as to why he opted to speak now.
“I’ve been asked to be club captain of Vincent’s this year so I was conscious that I wanted to promote Vincent’s in the right light today with the launch of the Dublin championships.
“Tomas (Quinn – St Vincent’s clubmate, Dublin’s commercial & marketing manager) asked me to do it, again a good friend of mine, so I came out to promote the championships. That’s all.
“I try and help out the club if at all possible. We were only down there a couple of Saturdays ago giving out Easter eggs to the kids. Two hundred, two hundred and fifty kids down there on a Saturday morning – trying to get into the car park is a bit of a disaster!
“As a player you don’t have too much time to give in that capacity but it is something I will probably look at in the future, take on a younger side and develop the younger lads.”
Connolly’s playing endeavours are his current focus. He’s hoping for a third successive league medal on Sunday week with Dublin and feels fortunate to be part of the present wave of success.
“We go out to win every game but maybe I’m just lucky, I’m part of a great team in St Vincents and with Dublin over the last three or four year, just really really lucky.
“Complacency doesn’t come into it, if you get too big for your boots you’ll be brought right back down to ground level. You saw what happened against Corofin, we were red-hot favourites going into the game. I don’t think we took our eye off the ball any little bit, we were defeated.”
And in an era where the culture in Gaelic football is defensive, Connolly is not jaded by the game or downbeat about the systems he faces.
“I don’t get tired. I actually love playing football, especially on a sunny day like today. Been very lucky, I’ve actually never broken a bone in my body in my life, never pulled a muscle, on had a couple of soft tissue issues, nothing.
“Anyone who plays a blanket defence – you see it in soccer – they’re playing within the rules of the game. All we can do is go out and try and beat that.
“To be honest I enjoy the challenge of a blanket defence or guys parking the bus or whatever they want to do. It’s a different focus, a different challenge. You look forward to breaking that down.”
When faced with a top-class defensive system in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final, Connolly gave a virtuoso display. He shot 0-5 in that defeat to Donegal but dismisses a suggestion that Paul Durcan’s first-half save from his goal bound shot was the defining moment.
“It could have been (different). But a lot of other things happened in that game that could have been a bit different but weren’t. Yeah, it was a good save.
“I probably should have put it in the right hand corner rather than going across the keeper but it’s not something that haunts me. It’s a shot at goal. I think we were winning the game at that point anyway so in my opinion anyway it wasn’t a major turning point.
“I think every defeat with club or county is equally hard to take to be honest with you. I’m a competitive guy. I like to go out and I like to win. Obviously it’s an All-Ireland semi-final and it is hard to take at the time but we’re just looking forward now.”
