When Damien Comer isn’t making the county minor team, there’s hope for everyone.
In the last four seasons, it’s hard to picture a Galway team without their special-service bull of a forward – as graceful on his feet as he is ignorant.
It’s hard to imagine a game plan that wouldn’t revolve around direct ball straight into the sizable chest of the Tribesmen’s prized 90 kilo beef. It’s hard to even dream of enjoying football as much without Comer tearing it up – free and wild.
He’s a man who plays without inhibition or limitations. He’s unfazed, he looks that way and he acts that way. He’s an example to players all over the island, to play to your strengths, to play to your maximum, to just bloody play.
But Comer is also an example to everyone who never made their minor team. He didn’t make Galway’s either. But, in 2013, he won an All-Ireland under-21 title and now he’s already led their seniors to Connacht glory. Sky’s the limit for this man who was once passed over by his county.
So much so that he wasn’t even playing with St. Jarlath’s two years before that All-Ireland under-21 success when his school made it to the Hogan final.
“I don’t know if I lost a bit of interest or what it was. I suppose I hadn’t fully developed either, I was kind of a late bloomer,” the Galway star spoke with SportsJOE’s GAA Hour podcast.
“Growth-wise, I grew towards the end of the Leaving Cert and I was pretty small up until that point. Once I got that growth spurt, it kind of gave me a bit of confidence going forward.
“I was just lucky really because even the under-21 trials, I didn’t go for them. There just happened to be a few club games – a junior A final, under-21 games – and the under-21 manager spotted me. I went to the minor trials alright but obviously didn’t blossom and I didn’t succeed in them.”
Many a player would sympathise with Comer’s woes at a trial.
You turn up, people don’t even know your name, the chances are you will be played out of position and, in a 15-man game, you are reliant on your team mates to help you out whether you like it or not. If they’re either not good, not familiar with you or they’re too selfish, that can all impact your performance.
Your ability as a footballer is shown over a season, not a one-off trial match. And Comer does not like the concept.
“Personally, I don’t agree with the setup of a trial,” he told The GAA Hour.
“Say for that minor trial, I was brought in and I wouldn’t have known the majority of the lads – I might’ve known one or two of them. There are different clicks between different clubs and you might not get on any ball.
“I just don’t agree with the system or think that it works. If you can go and pick a player out of his own club team where he’s most beneficial and most influential, it’s a more productive way of picking people for a panel rather than bringing a load of randomers together who won’t be playing well together because they don’t even know each other.
“Maybe it’s the system that failed me in that sense, rather than having the talent or the interest.”
It’s crazy to think of a man of that talent not getting a sniff but then it’s crazier to think he was just like any other Gael in the country – still dreaming.
“I remember looking on, a few of my friends would’ve been older in football terms and seeing them doing it, I would’ve loved to have been at the level they were playing at with Galway. It was always an ambition of mine but it just never seemed like it was going to happen.”
Keep ploughing away. It can happen if you want it enough.
"It's the guys who want it more than anyone else who usually end up making it" https://t.co/7HgyIip7vx
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) October 6, 2016
Listen to the full Damien Comer interview below (from 24:55).
