Which was better?
Sport is all about the now. It’s easy to become a forgotten man. It might only take a week, it might only take a day, but there’s never room for sentiment and yesterday’s achievements become a thing of the past just like that.
Sporting audiences are insatiable. Impress them and they’ll be all over you. Fail to keep on impressing them and they’ll forget about you just as easy.
Take the Tipperary hurlers, for example. Last September, as All-Ireland champions, they were lauded as the present and the future, the best team since Kilkenny’s four-in-a-row heroes, and they were set to go on and do something similar themselves. Fast forward to April, and after a heavy defeat in the league final to Galway, questions were being asked of their character, from inside and outside the Premier County.
After failing to retain the Liam MacCarthy, those types of questions are still persisting.
2017 has been the year of Con O’Callaghan. The Cuala star has romped through the hurling and football seasons, winning championship after championship, individual gong after individual gong.
The man has been a model of ferocious consistency and relentless hunger. His focus always seems to be unwavering from the next ball and his ability to leave defenders trailing in his frightening wake never weaned from January with the Dublin under-21 footballers to December with the Cuala hurlers.
A team player, a level head, but the most impressive thing about the forward is that, even with all the success he’s had, he’s still the same Con. If any other 21-year-old in the country enjoyed similar level of success, we suspect they wouldn’t be as modest as this man.
O’Callaghan’s 2017 finishes with some extraordinary feats:
Con O'Callaghan's 2017 👑
All-Ireland club SHC 🏆
U21 Leinster football 🏆
U21 All-Ireland football 🏆
Leinster SFC 🏆
All-Ireland SFC 🏆
All-Star ⭐
Young Footballer of the Year 🏅
Dublin club SHC 🏆
Leinster club SHC 🏆That's a wrap 👏 pic.twitter.com/Hj777yDnuk
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) December 3, 2017
The man was a leader in every single one of these team triumphs, as reflected by his All-Star and Young Footballer of the Year award, and the fact that he’s been widely acclaimed as the best club hurler in Ireland so far this year.
He won every prize available to him, with the only exception being the Footballer of the Year award, and a farcical lack of a nomination for the RTÉ Sportsperson of the Year award – but that’s a matter for another day.
Similarly, in 2006, the only prize that evaded Kilkenny hurler James ‘Cha’ Fitzpatrick was the Hurler of the Year award. The Ballyhale Shamrocks man, as pointed out by his teammate Richie Hogan, was successful in every competition he entered from under-21 club hurling, to pre-season inter-county competitions to senior inter-county championship.
https://twitter.com/richiehogan8/status/942313632544772096
Fitzpatrick cut his inter-county career short in 2011, at the age of 26. He had endured a frustrating year, and was unable to secure a consistent starting berth i lár na páirce, where he had been playing for the previous five years. Michael Rice had arrived on the scene and he and Michael Fennelly formed a formidable midfield partnership.
He admitted himself to have felt that even outstanding performances in training wouldn’t have swayed Brian Cody’s mind on him.
So, the boy wonder retired early, but he does have some fond memories, particularly of that 2006 year.
Now, a 32-year-old, ‘Cha’ is a primary school teacher in St. Olaf’s in Dublin, and is renowned for his love of a game of golf, as well as his pursuit of a DJ career on the side.
