By John Harrington

A Zoom call isn’t usually the best medium through which to read someone’s body language, but Cillian O’Connor is definitely giving off the vibe of someone very happy in their own skin right now.

He’s cracking jokes, giving thoughtful answers instead of batting away questions, and generally just radiating positivity as he looks ahead to Saturday’s All-Ireland SFC Final against Dublin.

Easy to be positive you might think when he’s just scored 4-9 against Tipperary in the All-Ireland semi-final and arguably playing the best football of his life, but there’s more to it than that.

He’s 28 years old now and in his 10th year of championship football. The journey he has travelled to get here has given him a lot of perspective.

Like most inter-county players his relationship with his sport has changed over the years and right now O’Connor is in a very sweet spot.

“The first few years were a buzz for me because for all your youth you’re dying to get playing with Mayo,” he reflects. “So then when you get there’s unbelievable.

“You can’t believe how lucky you are to be representing your county on the biggest stages.

“After a few years naturally you become accustomed to it and you become a bit more used to dealing with it. Which is good in one sense because you can learn from your experiences, but then maybe somewhere along the way part of you starts to take it granted a little bit, or stops appreciating it as much as you should.

“Maybe, without going into it too much, the break over the summer there and the fear of losing this season made me, and I would suspect a few more of my teammates, realise how precious it is and how fleeting and short a career is.

“You mention enjoyment - life is short, you have to do what you enjoy.

“We need to remind ourselves that we kick a ball around, play the sport we love, there happens to be 100,000s of people who love following it and take inspiration and joy from it.

“So I do feel that we’re a lucky bunch and I think that’s part of why we’re enjoying it.”

If O’Connor ever did get a little bit stale, you could hardly blame him.

As well as all the collective training he’s done with club and county over the years, he’s also spent countless hours on his own practicing his free-kick routine.

He wouldn’t be as good as he is if he didn’t have an obsessive focus on gaelic football, but that sort of relationship with your sport can be a mentally draining one.

It’s important occasionally to press the reset button by reminding yourself why you fell in love with kicking a ball in the first place, and to get those neurons firing again.

“Yeah, exactly, that’s it in a nutshell,” says O’Connor. “It’s that balance between honing your skills as much as you can, and looking for tiny marginal gains all the time, and trying to get better, and little percentages here and there.

“There’s balancing that with it’s just a sport. I love playing it. If there was no one coming to our matches and we were playing in a swamp down the road I’d still be doing it.

“It’s important not to lose sight of that. So it’s balancing that hunger and drive for improvement with the enjoyment of knocking a ball around.

“Our sessions are really enjoyable at the moment. Obviously there’s hard-work and there’s runs and there’s plenty of conditioning work that Conor Finn puts us through that isn’t as enjoyable as football but has to be done.

“But there’s plenty of games pre-training that we play. Little five-a-sides, plenty of stuff to remind us that it’s a sport that we love playing.”

It helps massively too of course when you feel physically capable of playing to your full potential, which O’Connor currently does for the first time in quite a while.

A niggling knee injury that eventually required surgery at the end of 2018 and then the intensive rehab that followed had previously hindered him, but now he’s very much operating at full throttle again.

“I'm delighted to be back playing because I carried niggles and injuries for a while and you do feel guilty that you're not contributing to your team-mates and you're not carrying your weight and you're not helping,” he admits.

“It's a horrible feeling when you're looking out at the pitch and you're not able to do anything from the sideline or you're just back from an injury and you're not able to do your job properly.

“I do feel that is the toughest part. But, I think the Covid lay-off gave me a chance to get things right, and it gave other players a chance to get injuries settled.

“The best part about being back is just being able to do your bit for the team and know that you're not letting anyone on your team down.”

It’s helping too that he’s part of such a dynamic Mayo full-forward along with Aidan O’Shea and Tommy Conroy.

The trio have developed a great understanding and it’s something they’ve worked hard on together.

“We had loads of time this year to have those conversations,” says O’Connor. “There’s a bit of both.

“You can talk about runs, what I like to do, what Aidan likes to do, what Tommy likes to do all you want but you can only get so far until you get out on the field in training and start trying them.

“So, we would have had conversations a few months ago. Then we had had 12-15 sessions, and those conversations have evolved and changed.

“We have examples that we can refer to now when we’re explaining something. ‘Do you remember that run you made in that game against Galway or Roscommon?’

“It’s both - it’s conversations but then it’s also putting it into practice. And then you’ve got players with different styles in the mix.

“James Carr in training that we’d be playing alongside is brilliant at certain things. We’d be asking him about his turn or his run.

“The James Durcans - real pace that we’ve been mixing with - Paul Towey as well, who is a brilliant kick passer and has great vision.

“So you try and pick the best of all the lads and pick their brains on it and increase your understanding of everyone’s habits.”

The arrival of Conroy onto the scene has been a real boon for O’Connor because it means opposition defences can’t focus as much on simply stopping him as the most likely source of Mayo’s scores.

Conroy might be young and inexperienced, but he already looks like the real deal.

He’s explosively quick, strong enough to win his own ball, has an eye for a goal, and shoots points for fun. It’s rare you see an inside forward look so complete in his first championship season.

“I'd say he's the type who'd pull the guitar out at a house party and he'd be magically able to sing as well,” laughs O’Connor. “He has it all.

“He's been brilliant, a breath of fresh air. He's a great lad with a great attitude. To go up there in his first senior semi-final and kick four from play, create two or three goals. He just took it in his stride.

“He's just fantastic to play alongside. I just love, no more than the other players I've mentioned, I love learning from them - taking bits that he does brilliantly, asking them about them and picking his brains.”

The impact that Ciarán McDonald has made since joining the Mayo management team as a forwards coach is another reason why O’Connor is playing with a smile on his face.

McDonald was his boyhood hero, and getting the opportunity to work with him has disproven the theory that you should never meet your heroes.

“He's been brilliant around the place,” says O’Connor. “His enthusiasm for the game is infectious. He just loves kicking a ball around.

“Getting that joy back into the season where you're just loving going out - probably after that period where you didn't know if we'd have a season - he's really added to that [feeling of] 'Let's just enjoy it'.

“Let's just try these passes, these shots. If they don't work out, so what? Get the next one do it again'. He's really encouraging players to express themselves and go after chances, 'Forget about the consequences. If it doesn't work, so what? Go again'.

“From a tactical point of view, he's another forward voice around the place. He wants us to be progressive in kicking the ball. He's just reminded us about aspects of the game that we love doing.

“You get these little conversations before training or after training with him. He's got such a bank of experience. It's invaluable.”

O’Connor has played in five All-Ireland Finals, losing four and drawing one.

When asked what his routine is for them, he jokes that whatever it is maybe he should consider changing it at this stage.

The fact that he can make light-hearted quips like that about what must have been very painful experiences gives further insight into the perspective that O’Connor has gained over the course of his career.

When it’s put to him that Mayo haven’t gotten enough credit for coming so close during an era when Dublin have been so good, it’s not something that seems to concern him.

“To the victor, the spoils,” he says with a shrug. “When people review seasons, the winner is the one that's going garner the credit. That's sport and that's the way it should be.

“As a group, we don't go out trying to seek credit, approval or praise from people because that's so up and down. Some fellas will say you're brilliant and others will say you're rubbish.

“You could win a final and there will still be people picking holes. The external credit isn't something we really chase.

“We know when we've done something really well and played well. Equally, we know when we've messed up and not done things well.

“The validation of your teammates and management is what you're really chasing.”