Gaelic Games

Paul Conroy bides his time before making any big decision on his future

Galway’s FOTY candidate and Player of the Month still coming to terms with the disappointment of All-Ireland final defeat

Paul Conroy in action during the All-Ireland final defeat to Armagh at Croke Park. He kicked three fine points from play on the day as Galway went down by a point. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho
Seán Moran
Fri Aug 16 2024 - 06:00

Paul Conroy has yet to make up his mind about the future.

Former Galway All-Ireland-winning captain Ray Silke suggested that the All-Ireland final defeat by Armagh might be the time to drop the curtain on a 16-year career so that the 35-year-old could “get out at the top”.

Speaking at Thursday’s PwC GAA-GPA Player of the Month awards, the centrefielder himself disagrees on the timing of such a decision – whatever its substance.

“I think it would be the wrong time to make the decision when the game is still so fresh in your memory and the emotions might still be a little bit raw. I think over the next couple of weeks I need to sit down and do a bit of thinking about it.

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“I think it’s just the energy and drive, just to see if it’s there. In fairness, my body has been good to me. It has held up well through the years . . . just need to make sure that if I do decide to go back, I’m able to give it everything because if you only half want to be there, if you don’t feel like you’re totally driven to go again there’s no point being in the set-up.”

He escaped the post-All-Ireland gloom with his family by heading for Spain.

“You don’t have too many people down on the strip in Marbella asking you about GAA so that was a nice break.”

Whereas the talk of him being in line for the main individual award of the season is “nice to hear”, it doesn’t compensate for the scale of collective disappointment.

Having stepped up immediately from captaining the minors to an All-Ireland in 2007, Conroy says he has no specific explanation for his longevity.

“I probably worked a little bit on the psychology side of things as well. I think I’m playing with more freedom than I was before; all those things together but I don’t think there is any one magic formula.”

Galway’s championship challenge evolved from losing an All-Ireland final two years ago – he felt that the “hype wasn’t as much” this year – through a disciplined campaign, hampered by injury to key players but nonetheless focused.

The final was an anticlimax and he acknowledges he was conscious of the match slipping away.

“Yeah, I suppose you are. Once the goal went in, it kind of changed the momentum a bit and then obviously we were missing chances. I think our efficiency was down to 51%, 52%. We hadn’t been there all year in percentages and it’s just a pity that it was the All-Ireland final day that it happened.”

Of the proposals to improve football under consideration by Jim Gavin’s football review committee, he likes the added value of long-range points, a speciality of his own, joking that, “it might give you a bit more bargaining power in the video analysis on the Tuesday evening after a game if you’ve put two long-range shots out over the back net!

“But anything that encourages contests and forward play and kicking, that’s kind of what people want to see, isn’t it?”

Seán Moran

Seán Moran

Seán Moran is GAA Correspondent of The Irish Times