Tommy Conroy savours his moment in the sun
Tommy Conroy of Mayo celebrates after scoring a late point during the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship final match between Kerry and Mayo at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Dáire Brennan/Sportsfile Photo by Daire Brennan/Sportsfile.
By John Harrington
It was somehow fitting that Tommy Conroy should be the man to seal Mayo’s All-Ireland SFC Final triumph with that last minute point.
His own career had been a microcosm of the potential and pain that had been Mayo’s story until yesterday’s victory over Kerry.
When he burst onto the scene in 2020 he looked like the sort of lethal inside-forward that Mayo football had been crying out for, but a ruptured cruciate ligament in 2022 was a major set-back.
When he made it back from that injury his talent was still apparent but it sparked intermittently without ever bursting into a sustained flame.
When his county needed him most on Sunday though, Conroy was ready, willing, and able.
He came on 24 minutes into the first half and Mayo were much the better team afterwards because he gave them a focal point in attack they had lacked until his introduction.
His well-timed diagonal runs and ability to win ball kicked into the corners enabled Mayo to get higher up the pitch more quickly than they had previously which proved to be a real game-changer.
With Conroy as the tip of the spear, Ryan O’Donoghue was able to drop deeper and fire arrows at Kerry from all sorts of angles which also had a huge impact on the game.
Conroy has had to overcome a good deal of adversity in his career, but that made the experience of playing a pivotal role in the county’s greatest day for 75 years all the more satisfying.
“Andy always just says try and show for kick passes and try and get us up the pitch and I suppose that's what I tried to do,” Conroy told GAA.ie
“Thankfully, I was able to have a bit of an impact.
“When you grow up as a kid you picture these things. But when it happens, it's just unbelievable.
“I suppose I've had two serious injuries. It's days like this that makes it all the more worthwhile. You just think back on everything and I'm just absolutely thrilled.”
Tommy Conroy, left, and Ryan O'Donoghue of Mayo celebrate with the Sam Maguire cup after the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship final match between Kerry and Mayo at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile.
The mental strength of Mayo teams has long been questioned, but on Sunday they showed they were made of the right stuff.
They recovered from a poor start to dominate the game, and should have won the game more comfortably than they did even if the weight of history meant it was never likely to be a smooth passage.
“Especially towards the end of the first half and the start of the second half, we just had so much momentum,” says Conroy.
“At times, we probably didn't convert as much as we would have liked to but we always back ourselves. We've been in similar positions already this year. We started poorly against Meath
“We were 10 or 11 down that day. I suppose going through things like that, too, just improves us as a team. Thankfully we were able to learn from it.
“I thought our defence, our one-on-one defending, was absolutely unbelievable. Especially with the calibre of players that Kerry have. They have so much talent all over their forward line.”
Mayo supporters will never tire of rewatching the final minute of the game when the nerve-shredding tension of keeping Kerry’s late charge at bay was finally released by Conroy’s late point.
It’s a moment in time he’ll savour for the rest of his life.
“It was just an unbelievable feeling knowing that time was up,” he says.
“It was just brilliant and a bit surreal, to be honest. It's everything I've ever dreamed of.”
