“All he does is score.”
This was the refrain throughout Robbie Keane’s international career. There were the usual epithets thrown his way – that he only does it against poor teams, that he was selfish, that he was being carried in the team for his last years.
And then the Irish team lost him, all those goals he got against poor teams weren’t replaced, and now we find ourselves where we find ourselves in international football.
Robbie Keane has done plenty to merit criticism in his time since he retired from international football but, during his playing career, he did the business for Ireland. Sixty-eight goals in 146 games. It brooks no argument.
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Scoring rates are a fairly blunt instrument to assess any sportsperson’s career, but they are nevertheless instructive. We are coming late to this in Gaelic games, but we’re getting there.
The top scorer in the history of championship hurling had been unchanged for 33 years since Eddie Keher retired in 1977, before Henry Shefflin took over in 2010.
But that crown has changed hands three times since – first Joe Canning in 2021, who only overtook Shefflin in the last five minutes of his intercounty career for Galway, and then TJ Reid and Patrick Horgan who have taken the record past the 600-point mark, and then this summer past the 700-point mark.
Horgan went into this year’s All-Ireland final two points behind Reid, and finished it 10 points clear. Whether they will continue this wrestle for supremacy into another year is unclear, but there is no indication from either man that they are about to retire. Canning had an average of 9.3 points per game – Reid a shade under eight, Horgan 8.6 points per game. Shefflin averaged eight on the nose. All incredible numbers, given the length of their respective careers.
But there is no such tussle at the top of the Gaelic football championship scoring chart. One player stands absolutely alone – a full 33 per cent more prolific than the man in second place. His average is also better than any other player in the top 25, and he has done this all on a team that plays in one of the two legitimately competitive provinces, and on a team that has never won an All-Ireland. That man’s name, of course, is Cillian O’Connor.
O’Connor’s decision to step away from the Mayo panel for a year, at 32, was not greeted with the sort of universal acclaim that followed Brian Fenton or James McCarthy’s recent retirements. There are a couple of reasons for that. For a start, this does not appear to be a retirement. He won’t be playing for Mayo in 2025, but that’s not to say he won’t return after that.
And those boys have some numbers of their own. Nine, in James McCarthy’s case – which is more All-Ireland medals than anyone else in the history of Gaelic football, with the exception of two of his Dublin team-mates. That’s a fairly compelling number as well.
But there really isn’t any gainsaying O’Connor’s scoring record. He didn’t have three games in Leinster every year where the opposition was hopelessly outmatched. He played on a consistently excellent, but hardly dominant team, and he got to his winning tally a full 33 games before Colm Cooper set his number.
He holds the record for the highest individual score in a game in championship history, with his 4-9 against Tipperary in the 2020 All-Ireland semi-final, and 4-3 of that came from play.
If for some reason you decide playing Tipperary doesn’t really count (even though it counts for just as much when you’re assessing the scoring record of Maurice Fitzgerald, or Colin Corkery, or David Clifford), then there’s the 3-4 he got against Jim McGuinness’s Donegal in 2013, when Donegal were All-Ireland champions. He got 3-1 from play that day too, against the most fearsome defensive unit we’d ever seen up to that point.
These are impressive numbers. But they’re just that – numbers. And for whatever reason, be it his uncanny ability to winkle frees out of minimal contact, his eagerness to provide a running commentary to opponents and referees, his presence at the centre of most outbreaks of indiscipline in the Mayo attack, he doesn’t get the respect those numbers demand.
These are strange things to be saying about a Mayo footballer. He was not beloved. He was not even remotely interested in being liked. He was an edgy competitor, who allowed that competitive instinct to boil over plenty of times. He was, in short, the antithesis of your typical Mayo footballer – certainly your typical Mayo forward. I’ve always admired that in him.
He has struggled to return to top form since the Achilles tendon injury he suffered in 2021. He hasn’t been able to impact big games in the same way since. But he hit a monster score from play late on in the 2024 Connacht final, he got four points from play in his first start of the championship against Cavan, and the suspicion remains he would be well suited to any rule changes that may be incoming.
The decision is made for 2025, and Aidan O’Shea confirmed as much this week, but if this is the last we’ve seen of Cillian O’Connor, amid all the noise and all the criticism, those numbers will still stubbornly speak for themselves.
