Up, up, up and away he goes.
Darren Hughes is a big man, so is his brother Kieran but you’d need a teleporter if you wanted to beat Conor Glass to a throw-in. He wouldn’t be much taller than the Hughes boys but he has a bigger leap than everyone and to start Sunday’s Ulster senior football quarter final, Joe McQuillan might as well have just handed him the ball.
Joe didn’t do that, he did what he’s supposed to and then Conor Glass did what he usually does. He soared into the sky like a pumped-up salmon and for one of the first times in their lives, the two Hughes boys looked small. And from the word go, Glen were on the front foot.
Glass brought it back down to Celtic Park Derry with him and it was some start to the game for them then when he lamped it into the sky, destination edge of the square. It was a ball-breaker for any full back to deal with and as Ross McKenna could do nothing else only punch it into the unknown, Scotstown were under the cosh and having won a free on the rebound, Glen were a point up.
This is the sort of adventure Conor Glass brings on the regular. Maybe it’s something to do with the five years he spent down under as a Hawthorn player in the AFL, maybe it’s something he’s always had but he has this tendency to do the unexpected.
It’s exciting to watch and for Glen and for Derry, it’s a joy to behold. It’s hardly any coincidence really that, after years of huffing and puffing, his club only got over the line when he came home from Australia to help them. Strangely, he played senior for his county before he did with his club and while he impressed for Derry last year, we’ve really seen the best of him this year.
That’s because has another year of football under his belt now and as one of the players of the club championship so far, his impact has been sensational. There are the high-catches, the engine that knows no end, there are the incisive runs and as we saw on Sunday, there’s the ability to kick a pearler on the run.
There’s also just a hint of the AFL about him and while his screamer – a spectacular mark that typically involves a player jumping up on the back of another player in the AFL – was blown up by Joe McQuillan, it’s a taster of the magic this man has at will.
Conor Glass thinks he's still in the AFL. In all seriousness though, what a baller 🏐pic.twitter.com/dKjVPfDyPS
— GAA JOE (@GAA__JOE) December 6, 2021
Indeed, on Monday, Glass himself tweeted to say that such moves should be permitted in the GAA. “The GAA introduced the mark to bring back the art of high catching but if players are going to get penalised for doing so then it defeats the purpose,” tweeted the Derry man.
“In my opinion, the action of taking a ‘specky’ is not deemed a charge. We are taught to jump with the knee up & if the opposition is standing under the ball then it is at his own risk,” he added.
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