Galway are the most physical hurling team in the business, but there’s not one man on that Galway team who has undergone a physical transformation quite like Conor Whelan.
The Kinvara club man has been the best hurler in the country so far this year. He scored five from play against Dublin, eight from play against Offaly and he racked up just the four against Tipperary on Sunday.
Joe Canning may be the bookmaker’s favourite for the hurler of the year gong at the moment, but he hasn’t come close to matching Whelan’s relentless consistency.
Yet this man is only 20 years old.
Each one of his four points on Sunday demanded skill of technically outrageous proportion, and that’s exactly what he has, but there’s a marked difference between Whelan and many other technically gifted players.
Whelan is a bloody dog. He hounds opponents, he fires into tackles and rucks with reckless abandon, and you will be hard pressed to find a player that can compete and fight for a breaking ball quite like he does.
His selfless bravery and ability to throw his weight around the player must make him the biggest nightmare a defender could possibly face. The man has the tenacity of a fierce corner back, and the skill if your most talismatic forward.
The thing about Whelan, though, is that he has that weight to throw around the place.
The NUIG student was marked out as a star of the future when he broke onto the Galway minor team as a sixteen-year-old. He enjoyed three successful years with the under-18’s but since last year’s Fitzgibbon cup (with NUIG) onwards the boy has become a beast.
Massive gains.
He must’ve put in some work over the last two winters in the gym.
JJ Delaney was speaking on The GAA Hour Show on Monday when he revealed his amazement at Whelan’s transformation, and the type of hours he must be spending in the gym.
“He’s a little pocket-rocket. When the ball is in there, he could fight two or three lads (and come out with it) He does a lot of the hard work. He is a big unit for twenty years of age. He must’ve been living in the gym for the last two years. When I was twenty years of age I know I’d never even seen the inside of a gym.
“He’s after filling out now, he’s actually after filling out a lot more than he should be to be fair. He’s a block of a man, like he’s very, very hard to knock off the ball. One of his points in the first half, he just bent down and caught a low ball, shimmied and hit it straight over the bar. He always had the work-rate, but he’s bringing the scoring to the fore this year,” said Delaney.
Colm Parkinson feels Whelan has the potential to become one of the game’s greats, and he’s not the only one.
“Isn’t it mad that he’s only 20? He was much more of a slip of a fellow, he played (senior) when he was still 18. When I was still 18 you weren’t even dreaming of senior hurling. Imagine playing at that level, he played in an All-Ireland final then. Imagine the level that this lad is going to get to.”
You can listen to the lad’s chat about Whelan’s rise here from 28″00′.
