AFTER MANCHESTER UNITED won the 1999 Champions League, Roy Keane spoke of how he felt a detachment from the occasion, having not played because of the suspension he earned after accumulating yellow cards.
In his mind, he didn’t feel he earned his medal.
As bleak and desperate as that outlook is and was, it can be commonplace in the world of GAA too.
Thank God then, that none of the Mayo veterans who didn’t get to taste action on All-Ireland final day have related anything approaching that. For Rob Hennelly, Aidan O’Shea and Cillian O’Connor, they did so much in paving the way over the past 15 years to the point that Mayo finally delivered Sam Maguire.
In Castlebar surrounded by fans. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
Now, O’Connor is the first from the group to publicly retire. He does so with a deep contentment and as the record scorer in championship football with 32-364.
That came across 14 seasons where he made 75 appearances, 62 of them starting.
All in, his sideboard is groaning with the weight of a senior All-Ireland, seven Connacht titles, two National Leagues, two All-Stars and two Young Footballer of the Year Awards.
Along with five county titles, which is where the story of modern Mayo football, Cillian O’Connor and James Horan begins.
The club
As a teenager, his club Ballintubber made a county final. They had never won one in their history, but were managed by Horan.
They had an All-Star in Alan Dillon, and the Mayo minor captain, Cillian O’Connor. The latter popped up with two critical points in the second half, and they beat the more celebrated Castlebar Mitchels.
Horan went straight in as Mayo manager.
In 2010, Mayo had gone soft. They were stuffed 0-15 to 1-8 in Connacht by Sligo before being turfed out of the first round of the qualifiers by Longford.
For 2011, quite a few teams, noting the physical prowess of the 2010 All-Ireland champions Cork, realised that to get ahead, they had to get mean.
That meant Pat Gilroy leaving Bernard Brogan on the bench until he learned to put his body on the line. It came with Jim McGuinness dropping Michael Murphy back into the middle of the pitch and getting him to smack everything that moved.
And then, Mayo.
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The project was almost doomed from the start when London took them into extra-time in Ruislip in the Connacht quarter-final. O’Connor came off the bench to nab a single point.
By the time they extracted themselves from that mess, they beat Galway in the semi-final, O’Connor getting another single point.
In his first Connacht final, he went supernova, nailing 0-8 against Roscommon.
In the All-Ireland quarter-final, they laid down their statement, beating the previous year’s winners, Cork. O’Connor hit 0-6, all but one from placed ball. Mayo had arrived, whatever about gravity ensuing in the semi-final against Kerry.
The best way to rate players is to watch how the opposition reacted to them.
By the time O’Connor was 27, he already had the championship scoring record. When Mayo played Dublin there was as keen an edge to any rivalry.
O'Connor does battle against The Dubs. Ben Brady / INPHO
Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO
O’Connor was a big part of that. In 11 appearances, two coming off the bench, he scored 2-65. The figures were helped in that 1-54 came from placed balls.
But in the two All-Ireland semi-finals of 2015, he hit 2-15.
A year later he hit 0-16 across the two final games.
The message is clear and as old as time – they respected O’Connor enough to fear him, perhaps even hate him.
They might have had due cause too. O’Connor was a rarity: a forward who not only loved to tackle, but revelled in hitting hard.
Running men
From 2011, Mayo got harder and harder. They ran hard and they hit hard. Shedding Conor Mortimer during the 2012 season was an inevitable consequence of their new direction.
A few years into the journey, Mayo played Kerry in the 2014 All-Ireland semi-final. Here is a clip that embodies the machine that O’Connor and those around him had become by then, to level up the scores halfway through the second half.
A brilliant @RTEgaa clip that captures so much of what made @CILL14N special.
A man down, 2 points down, game in the balance & he pulls out 45 seconds:
- Helps dispossessing Maher
- Flicks it creatively to Dillon (score)
- Dispossesses O'Mahony
- Swerves it over the black spot https://t.co/YY0MizKGaN
A year or two later, Kieran McGeeney was giving a group interview at a time when there were questions about the level of physicality his Armagh team were bringing to their game.
His answer was that Ulster teams were guilty by association, and that the hardest-hitting team in Ireland was Mayo.
They carried this through as a legacy.
Even as recently as 2024, Mayo played Derry in a preliminary quarter-final that went to extra-time and then penalties. Derry prevailed, but their players would freely admit that they had never felt pain from impacts quite like it.
It had to be the same the other way too. Have you ever seen a forward dash into contact with the same lack of regard for himself as O’Connor?
It’s been said by more than one commentator that Mayo’s win gives succour to other counties. Mayo’s All-Ireland has been called a ‘breakthrough.’ The logic goes that anything can happen in this crazy new world of Gaelic football.
Hell, why wouldn’t a Roscommon, even a Monaghan, dream of an All-Ireland, given how they coped with Mayo in 2026?
Persistence
And that misses the point. Roscommon and Monaghan have many miles to go before they pay their dues to Sam Maguire. Mayo had been in the mix for all of O’Connor’s senior career. They lost six finals from 2012 to 2021. They made 10 All-Ireland semi-finals in 11 seasons.
Mayo and O’Connor knew not only every inch of the Croke Park structure and dressing rooms, they knew every bump of the road from Dublin, leading to Castlebar for training.
With Andy Moran insisting that Mayo abandon the practice of some previous years of split training sessions and everything taking place in Castlebar, O’Connor knew his chances of making it back to full fitness were diminished.
As he told The Irish Examiner’s Maurice Brosnan in his excellent piece covering his retirement, he knew that road, the hours of sitting in a minibus there and back, late nights and ten-hour Tuesdays, would lead to soft tissue muscle injuries. So it proved. But he never complained and hid his fears.
That’s incredible leadership.
With Andy Moran after winning the All-Ireland. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
Would Mayo have got there earlier if his Achilles hadn’t ruptured in 2021, during a poxy Division 2 play-off game against Clare?
Well, apply some logic to it.
When Mayo and Tyrone lined up for the 2021 All-Ireland final, Aidan O’Shea was in for the throw-in but soon made his way to the edge of the square where Ronan McNamee was waiting. Padraig Hampsey was marking Tommy Conroy and Michael McKernan took up Ryan O’Donoghue.
If O’Connor had been fit, he would likely have occupied McNamee. Does that not sound like a sharper attack to you?
Sure, it might have arrived sooner. And it’s a stretch to say five more years of purgatory made the arrival all the more sweeter.
But one of the great careers got the ultimate recognition. It’s not everything, but it’s warm consolation.
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Record scorer and no darling of the Dubs, Cillian O'Connor goes out on his terms
AFTER MANCHESTER UNITED won the 1999 Champions League, Roy Keane spoke of how he felt a detachment from the occasion, having not played because of the suspension he earned after accumulating yellow cards.
In his mind, he didn’t feel he earned his medal.
As bleak and desperate as that outlook is and was, it can be commonplace in the world of GAA too.
Thank God then, that none of the Mayo veterans who didn’t get to taste action on All-Ireland final day have related anything approaching that. For Rob Hennelly, Aidan O’Shea and Cillian O’Connor, they did so much in paving the way over the past 15 years to the point that Mayo finally delivered Sam Maguire.
Now, O’Connor is the first from the group to publicly retire. He does so with a deep contentment and as the record scorer in championship football with 32-364.
That came across 14 seasons where he made 75 appearances, 62 of them starting.
All in, his sideboard is groaning with the weight of a senior All-Ireland, seven Connacht titles, two National Leagues, two All-Stars and two Young Footballer of the Year Awards.
Along with five county titles, which is where the story of modern Mayo football, Cillian O’Connor and James Horan begins.
The club
As a teenager, his club Ballintubber made a county final. They had never won one in their history, but were managed by Horan.
They had an All-Star in Alan Dillon, and the Mayo minor captain, Cillian O’Connor. The latter popped up with two critical points in the second half, and they beat the more celebrated Castlebar Mitchels.
Horan went straight in as Mayo manager.
In 2010, Mayo had gone soft. They were stuffed 0-15 to 1-8 in Connacht by Sligo before being turfed out of the first round of the qualifiers by Longford.
For 2011, quite a few teams, noting the physical prowess of the 2010 All-Ireland champions Cork, realised that to get ahead, they had to get mean.
That meant Pat Gilroy leaving Bernard Brogan on the bench until he learned to put his body on the line. It came with Jim McGuinness dropping Michael Murphy back into the middle of the pitch and getting him to smack everything that moved.
And then, Mayo.
The project was almost doomed from the start when London took them into extra-time in Ruislip in the Connacht quarter-final. O’Connor came off the bench to nab a single point.
By the time they extracted themselves from that mess, they beat Galway in the semi-final, O’Connor getting another single point.
In his first Connacht final, he went supernova, nailing 0-8 against Roscommon.
In the All-Ireland quarter-final, they laid down their statement, beating the previous year’s winners, Cork. O’Connor hit 0-6, all but one from placed ball. Mayo had arrived, whatever about gravity ensuing in the semi-final against Kerry.
The best way to rate players is to watch how the opposition reacted to them.
By the time O’Connor was 27, he already had the championship scoring record. When Mayo played Dublin there was as keen an edge to any rivalry.
O’Connor was a big part of that. In 11 appearances, two coming off the bench, he scored 2-65. The figures were helped in that 1-54 came from placed balls.
But in the two All-Ireland semi-finals of 2015, he hit 2-15.
A year later he hit 0-16 across the two final games.
The message is clear and as old as time – they respected O’Connor enough to fear him, perhaps even hate him.
They might have had due cause too. O’Connor was a rarity: a forward who not only loved to tackle, but revelled in hitting hard.
Running men
From 2011, Mayo got harder and harder. They ran hard and they hit hard. Shedding Conor Mortimer during the 2012 season was an inevitable consequence of their new direction.
A few years into the journey, Mayo played Kerry in the 2014 All-Ireland semi-final. Here is a clip that embodies the machine that O’Connor and those around him had become by then, to level up the scores halfway through the second half.
A year or two later, Kieran McGeeney was giving a group interview at a time when there were questions about the level of physicality his Armagh team were bringing to their game.
His answer was that Ulster teams were guilty by association, and that the hardest-hitting team in Ireland was Mayo.
They carried this through as a legacy.
Even as recently as 2024, Mayo played Derry in a preliminary quarter-final that went to extra-time and then penalties. Derry prevailed, but their players would freely admit that they had never felt pain from impacts quite like it.
It had to be the same the other way too. Have you ever seen a forward dash into contact with the same lack of regard for himself as O’Connor?
It’s been said by more than one commentator that Mayo’s win gives succour to other counties. Mayo’s All-Ireland has been called a ‘breakthrough.’ The logic goes that anything can happen in this crazy new world of Gaelic football.
Hell, why wouldn’t a Roscommon, even a Monaghan, dream of an All-Ireland, given how they coped with Mayo in 2026?
Persistence
And that misses the point. Roscommon and Monaghan have many miles to go before they pay their dues to Sam Maguire. Mayo had been in the mix for all of O’Connor’s senior career. They lost six finals from 2012 to 2021. They made 10 All-Ireland semi-finals in 11 seasons.
Mayo and O’Connor knew not only every inch of the Croke Park structure and dressing rooms, they knew every bump of the road from Dublin, leading to Castlebar for training.
With Andy Moran insisting that Mayo abandon the practice of some previous years of split training sessions and everything taking place in Castlebar, O’Connor knew his chances of making it back to full fitness were diminished.
As he told The Irish Examiner’s Maurice Brosnan in his excellent piece covering his retirement, he knew that road, the hours of sitting in a minibus there and back, late nights and ten-hour Tuesdays, would lead to soft tissue muscle injuries. So it proved. But he never complained and hid his fears.
That’s incredible leadership.
Would Mayo have got there earlier if his Achilles hadn’t ruptured in 2021, during a poxy Division 2 play-off game against Clare?
Well, apply some logic to it.
When Mayo and Tyrone lined up for the 2021 All-Ireland final, Aidan O’Shea was in for the throw-in but soon made his way to the edge of the square where Ronan McNamee was waiting. Padraig Hampsey was marking Tommy Conroy and Michael McKernan took up Ryan O’Donoghue.
If O’Connor had been fit, he would likely have occupied McNamee. Does that not sound like a sharper attack to you?
Sure, it might have arrived sooner. And it’s a stretch to say five more years of purgatory made the arrival all the more sweeter.
But one of the great careers got the ultimate recognition. It’s not everything, but it’s warm consolation.
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Big Hitter Cillian O'Connor GAA Mayo Retirement