Remember the name.
He may not be the biggest or he may not be the strongest. He may be small in stature but Shane Conway doesn’t let that affect him. Many of hurling’s finest have been slight figures with sharp hurling brains and big hearts. Just look at DJ Carey and Joe Deane back in the day. You’ve Graeme Mulcahy, Colm Galvin, Daniel Kearney proving that skill beats brawn now.
And when you’ve skill in your wrists and heart in your hurling, a lack of physicality is easily compensated for by style and grace.
Shane Conway has been on the radar in Kerry for a while now.
He may be only 21 but all hurling folk in the Kingdom have been hearing stories about this rising star for years now. They’d heard that this lad has got something different and as soon as they seen him in action they came out knowing that he’d make it on any team in the country.
He’s been standing out all the way through the Kerry underage ranks and he’s been winning championships for Lixnaw too.
Just three weeks ago this man scored 0-13 in the Kerry SHC final to bring his club their first senior title since 2014. He’d been through the heartbreak the year previous when as a 19-year-old he scored 1-10 in the drawn final, including a late leveller from a sideline cut before they came up short in the replay.
He wasn’t there in 2014 but he was the one who made the difference four years on.
And with the Kerry championship complete, the student is displaying his great gifts across the country in Cork now. Think what you will about UCC playing in the Cork SHC with players from clubs all over the county and from other counties too but they’ve readied many a Cork man for the Rebel senior jersey and they’ve given players like Shane Conway a chance in one of Ireland’s most competitive hurling championships too.
Shane Conway is taking the responsibility into the grains of his hurley and on his Rolex wrists. He was the key man when UCC dumped Erin’s Own out of the Cork Championship three weeks ago, the Kerryman racking up 0-10 points that day.
CONGRATULATIONS; to Shane Conway who was on the UCC team which played in the Cork Senior Hurling championship over the weekend and recorded a 2-16 to 0-23 point win over Erins Own of which he notched 0-10 points.
— Lixnaw GAA (@LixnawGAA) September 3, 2018
And Buff Egan was down in Cork on Sunday when the college faced their biggest challenge yet against Sarsfields. UCC ran out 0-20 to 1-14 winners and two men were the difference.
One was Darragh Fitzgibbon, the best young hurler in Ireland this year and the second was Shane Conway, the Kingdom star’s frees unerring and his general play class.
He ran rings around Sarsfield backs, he tapped points over off the hurl, he scored a few lovely ones on the run.
UCC; Congratulations to Shane Conway who was on the UCC Hurling team who defeated Sarsfields 0-20 TO 1-14 in the quarter finals of the Cork County Senior Hurling Championship. Shane accounted for ten of his sides total.
— Lixnaw GAA (@LixnawGAA) September 17, 2018
This man is coming, and he probably would make most county teams in Ireland.
