Cormac Costello of Dublin poses for a portrait with the Sam Maguire cup at the 2023 GAA Football All-Ireland Series national launch in Howth, Dublin. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile.
By John Harrington
Cormac Costello is one of those players who’s been a senior inter-county footballer for longer than you might think.
“I’m getting old”, he says, except he’s not. The Whitehall Colmcilles club-man is still just 28, but this is his 11th senior championship campaign.
It says a lot about how precocious a talent he was that he joined the Dublin panel as an 18-year-old in 2013 and won his first of seven All-Ireland titles that year.
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, but his memories of that first season remain vivid.
Joining a dressing-room stacked with players he’d watched win the 2011 All-Ireland Final was nerve-wracking experience at first, but ultimately a validating and formative one.
“You had Alan Brogan, Bernard Brogan, Eoghan O'Gara, Diarmuid Connolly, Stephen Cluxton, Michael Darragh, all of these guys,” says Costello.
“But they were nothing but welcoming. I'll never forget that at my first session they all came over and shook my hand and introduced themselves. It was very much a welcoming dressing-room and I would have learned an awful lot off those guys on the pitch and off it as well.
“It's something I've always been conscious of, but especially the last couple of years, that when new lads come into the panel that it was important to make it my business to introduce myself and be welcoming because I know how much it does mean to someone coming into the group. So It's something that I try to do myself.
“I think a strong dressing-room culture is very important. You need to have a trust there and honesty there in the group that we're all here for the same objective, to perform the best that we can. I think that is very important.”
Diarmuid Connolly and Cormac Costello of Dublin celebrate following the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Final Replay match between Dublin and Mayo at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
Costello’s inter-county career is an interesting case-study. He’s had to show a lot of patience, because for his first six seasons as an inter-county footballer he was never a mainstay of the team.
There were explosive cameos when he showed just how talented he was such as when he scored three points after coming on as a sub against Mayo in the 2016 All-Ireland Final replay that played a crucial part in Dublin’s one-point win.
But a combination of injury and the fact that Dublin had a wealth of options for their inside forward line meant that it took Costello longer than might have been expected to become a regular starter.
He made 18 appearances in the 39 championship matches that Dublin played from 2013 to 2018, and just two of those were starts.
But ever since the 2018 campaign he’s been an important player for Dublin, making 31 championship appearances and scoring 5-85.
“It's always been enjoyable,” says Costello. “Obviously you have your moments as well when things are tough, but that's like anything in life. Nothing is ever completely plain-sailing without its challenges.
“I'm enjoying this season as much as my first season. It's definitely not a thing where I'm saying, 'this is a slog', or anything like that. I think when it gets to that stage you know it's time to pack it in. But I'm certainly not at that stage now.”
Cormac Costello of Dublin is congratulated by his father John Costello after the 2018 GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Final match between Dublin and Tyrone at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Daire Brennan/Sportsfile
Perhaps his enthusiasm has never waned because Gaelic games has always been a way of life for the Costello family.
His father John has been Dublin GAA secretary since 1994, the same year Cormac was born, and the pair share the same love for the games.
“My mam and dad were always heavily involved in the GAA and love GAA,” says Costello.
“My very first memory was actually being brought down to Erin's Isle because that's who my Dad played for. So he brought me down to Erin's Isle when I was five or six and I was there for a litlte bit in the nursery.
“Then I went to school in St. Fiachra's in Whitehall and I asked why I wasn't playing with my friends from school so after that I went playing with Whitehall and grew up with great memories of playing for the club.
“My Da would have coached me all the way up along and we had a great team growing up. He would have coached the football and the hurling and it was something we just enjoyed being part of all the time.”
Costello missed Dublin’s three matches in the All-Ireland SFC group phase due to injury but expects to be fit for selection for Sunday’s All-Ireland quarter-final against Mayo.
It looks like Dessie Farrell’s team have timed their run nicely in terms of peaking at the business end of the season, and the Whitehall man admits they believe they’re good enough to bring the Sam Maguire Cup back to the capital for the first time since 2020.
“You do, of course,” he says. “But everyone has their belief. Each team that's left, in each one of those dressing-rooms there will be a belief that they can it. It's just about focusing on yourself.
“As cliched as it sounds, it is one match at a time. The top of the mountain is a while a way yet. To get there you need to get past the next big game and that's where your sole focus should be.”
