Declan Bogue

UP TO THE very end, Conor McManus gave it absolutely everything to see if he could still play inter-county football with Monaghan in 2025, but his hip simply refused.

“My body wasn’t giving me back, what I needed to get from it. Not my body, but my hip. The rest of my body is flying, that’s the frustrating thing about it. But the hip is a fairly central part of the body,” McManus told The 42 today.

“That’s why it took so long (to decide to continue or not). I wanted to give myself every possible chance to get back.”

Asked if he measured the ability of his hip in terms of flexibility or weight lifting, he answered starkly, “I measure it in pain. It’s a basic measurement. I was walking and feeling it. Walking is now a problem.

“But it’s been like that the last couple of years.”

Over the last few years, the Monaghan physios Emlyn Lynch and Sam Baida have been helping to get McManus healthy enough to get on the pitch to train and play.

Baida was back home in Australia recently and upon his return last Friday week, McManus visited him for a final assessment.  

“We done an hour, hour and a half and he said the hip is not in great shape, even from where it was last year. And the base I was working off was very low,” McManus says.

“I had the operation back in 2011. I went to Enda King in 2013 and the way he put it to me was like this; ‘You have €100 to spend. It’s up to you how you spend it. You can blow it all now in the next four or five years, or you can manage it and get seven or eight years out of it.’

“I got ten or twelve years, as it turned out at county level.

“It’s an arthritic hip, the hip needs to be replaced and will be replaced sooner rather than later. I am obviously going to try to play the club season and see how I go with it. But it is just not in great shape.

“I am sort of fed-up talking about it as people would nearly feel you are crying about your hip. And I don’t like going down that road.

“But in layman’s terms, it’s an arthritic hip that needs replaced and the time has come.

“For county football, I couldn’t prolong it any longer.”

McManus ends his involvement with Monaghan that stretches back to his senior debut as a teenager in 2007. He won two Ulster titles, three All-Stars and played in four international Rules series.

With Eoin Lennon as they lift the Anglo Celt in 2013. Presseye / William Cherry/INPHO Presseye / William Cherry/INPHO / William Cherry/INPHO

He does not rule out playing for his club, Clontibret, after a hip replacement, something Irish rugby players Jack McGrath and Sean O’Brien have managed.

But his decision to end his involvement with Monaghan did not come down to a series of heart-to-hearts with team mates or the manager, Gabriel Bannigan.

“The inability to train, to train at the level you need to train to be able to play at the level,” is the reason.

“That’s the crux of it. I have been managing that the last few years and the pain is no greater than it was maybe three or four years ago. But it’s not being able to train at the level you need, to get yourself where you need to be.

“You’re going out in an intercounty game and you are playing against the fastest and freshest 24, 25 year olds in the country. Against me, who is not fit to train?” he asks.  

McManus adds, “I always said I was never going to go into the Monaghan dressing room just for the sake of being there. For saying I had done another year or been there for X amount of time.

“For me, there’s no room for that in inter-county football. No room for sentiment. You are either in there adding value or you are not.

“The way I seen it was, I was not going to be able to add any value to the team. There are younger boys there mad for action. Let them at it.”

*****
See The 42 tomorrow for a feature-length  interview with Monaghan great Conor McManus.