PAUL MANNION SAYS he wouldn’t be back involved in the Dublin set-up if they’d continued their historic winning streak.
The All-Ireland match-winner was in Boston last summer as his teammates bowed out to Kerry at the semi-final stage and seeing that first loss to the Kingdom in over a decade triggered his desire to return.
Having previously said his Dublin days were over, it was his conscience that swayed his decision.
“If things went differently in the last couple of years and they’d have been winning, I don’t think I’d be here,” says Mannion.
“I was happy enough to have had my time, and the main thing for me was that Dublin were in a good place.
“When I stepped away, we were, and if we continued that success I don’t think I would have come back. But it was just difficult to watch on really over the last couple of years.
“Last year, I was away in Boston and I met a couple of lads who’d been asking me to come back and I just still wasn’t in the headspace or the right frame of mind to be going back in, and then seeing them lose to Kerry was tough.
“The year before I was down in Killarney watching that Mayo game in a pub and there was Mayo fans everywhere, and that was hectic.
“So after a couple of tough defeats like that, I decided that I couldn’t keep watching on in good conscience really, so I just said I’d come back and just try and help in any way I can, big or small.”
During an interview while in America last year, Mannion spoke of having “drawn a line under” his time in blue.
He had committed for the 2020 Covid Championship but the quick turnaround from that December All-Ireland prompted Mannion to take a break from which he had no intention of returning.
He underwent knee surgery in January 2022 and suffered an ankle injury last October which limited his involvement in Kilmacud Crokes’ run to the All-Ireland title.
That made his comeback “tougher than I’d anticipated” in terms of fitness but by then, his mind was made up.
He owed it to his former teammates to give one more push.
“I wanted to see the team do well to maybe feel better in myself or feel less guilty in some kind of weird way,” he said of his attitude during those two years away.
Someone was asking me yesterday, ‘Are these the days you came back for?’ And I was like, ‘Honestly, no.’
“I’m so lucky to have had so many great days and it wasn’t that I wanted more of that feeling kind of thing.
“It was very much the ‘I owe it to these lads’ factor. Jamesie, Fitzy, Clucko – those lads have picked up nine now – and Fenton, Ciarán, John Small – these lads have been around for so long and have committed so much, and I just felt I had to go back and try.”
He had a chat with fellow returnee Jack McCaffrey about going back although he jokes that he’d be afraid to call Stephen Cluxton to suss him out.
“I’m good pals with Jack and at that time after the Kerry game it turned out we were both feeling quite similar and yeah, we just said it was probably a good time to give it one more go.”
So is that it after the one more go?
“I don’t know, I’m not even thinking about that now to be honest. We’ll enjoy these few days and I’ll go back in for the club championship, which I’m really looking forward to because it has been great with Crokes for the last couple of years.
“But I’ll see where things are at for the next few months and for the older lads like Clucko and Jamesie, I don’t know if they are like, ‘Yeah, I’m sticking around’, but it would be hard to say no to them again, so we’ll see.”