“If your club was going that far, I don’t think you’d worry too much about it.”
Conor McManus knows a thing or two about commitment. He knows more about the demands placed on a modern day footballer and he knows full well that that load only grows heavier with talent.
Talent’s often a burden for young GAA men and women nowadays. The better you are, the more people who want a piece of you. And how the people line up ready to drag the next big thing here, there and every which road.
McManus happens to be good at what he does. He leads a line better than most people in the country and he splits posts like he has nothing better to be doing. That master trade has seen the Clontibret man rise to become the hottest property in Monaghan. It’s seen him fly to Australia to represent Ireland just a week after an Ulster semi final in what must feel like a constantly never-ending season.
For him though, there’s no real decision to be made in the matter. When your club has a season like McManus’ just had, he’d take playing into the depths of winter every single year. A calendar change could help the issue, of course it could, but when the Monaghan jersey is hung up for another season, there’s no place in the world that Conor McManus would rather be other than Clontibret.
“Something has to be done. I think something has to be tried,” the Farney star pondered proposed changes to have every GAA competition finished up in the one calendar year. “It will probably mean that any club that is going forward is going the distance [to December] but you’ll not mind if you’re going that far, you’d gladly take it. But it’s going to be a fairly hectic schedule to get all that finished up by December for club. If your club was going that far though, I don’t think you’d worry too much about it, but I do think that something has to be done.”
As Joe Brolly continues to claim that GAA has lost its joy in a new age of win-at-all-costs professionalism, McManus is in the Aaron Kernan camp on the subject. Yes, it’s bloody hard work but it’s a choice footballers make to be the best they can be.
“There are certain demands. It has probably gotten higher and higher,” the Monaghan man stated. “You know, one team wins an All-Ireland and everybody else is striving to what they’ve done. The likes of Dublin a couple of years ago, they set the standard with their 6am gym sessions and stuff like that and other teams have adopted that as well. The thing about it is, if you don’t do it, you’re going to be left behind. And, to be fair, I think most players enjoy the demands of it. Look, there are times you’d like to be doing something else but, at the end of the day, you’re committed to this and you’re enjoying it and it doesn’t last forever.”
It’s tough for the best of them but McManus finds himself in the unique position where both his club and county are fighting strongly on all fronts. That requires a balancing act and, sometimes, it breaks his heart having to sit out and watch his club mates do battle without him.
“It can be tricky at times, like whenever the county’s playing and you’re maybe sitting out star games or whatever the case is. You always like to give your club as much as you can. But, at the end of the day, whenever the county’s over, you leave your county allegiances to one side and you give your all to your club.
“You try to go as far as you possibly can and it’s no different for me than it is for anybody else. Once the county is over, you turn your allegiances to your club and that’s it.”
That’s it. Through all the allure of back-to-back Ulster finals with his county, league titles, Croke Park run-outs, Conor McManus sits down at the start of every year and Clontibret is at the forefront of his mind, too. Malachy O’Rourke has Monaghan dreaming big but his prized number 15 is still thinking about the Ulster club final appearance that got away in November. He’s still thinking about how tough it will be to back up their county title.
“I suppose you don’t really be thinking about that [going one better and winning an Ulster club]. It’s the same with Monaghan as it is with Clontibret, it’s very much one step at a time,” he said. “And particularly in Monaghan. The Monaghan championship is probably as competitive as it has been and probably as hard to win as it has been a long time. We had lost the last two championship finals with Clontibret there and then we won it this year so, from our point of view, we certainly wouldn’t be looking any further than within Monaghan.”
There are few things you can be sure of in this game. One of them is that Malachy O’Rourke will continue to have Monaghan competing at the top. One of them is that McManus – health-willing – will light up the championship for his county in the summer. One of those certainties, however, is not a club title. That’s something you just can’t take for granted.
But it is something they’ll all be thinking about. When county seasons go, when county careers finish even, club is there like a constant beating heart. Club is what matters. Conor McManus, just like any other club footballer in the land, knows that, too.
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